Back in the morning

 We've had a lovely weekend with T&J here, and now are playing catch-up.  K has another UTI so back to the Dr's and he's on ab's again. T&J's first house is gradually getting closer to happening, so keep your fingers x'd it all goes to plan.

No trouble getting kitten cats in LAST night.  At just gone half past five, Pippi marched into the living room and gave a very loud Siamese yowl which clearly meant "I'm BACK - why didn't you come looking for me?!!!"  Aren't they funny?

Just off for my bath now and then I will do 10 mins Yoga as I lifted a sack of fresh cat litter into my trolley at B&M Bargains today and promptly had my Sciatica return.

Naughty kitten cats playing games!

 

In a butter-wouldn't-melt moment (fast forward 3 seconds!!). . .  Last time T and J were here they led us a right dance at bed-time, hiding under beds, changing bedrooms, disappearing and they kept this up for half an hour at bed-time.

    Yesterday they upped the ante, and did the hide-and-seek OUTSIDE, waiting until it was getting dark - normally they're not allowed out after 5.30 ish, but both happened to be still out as it had been a nice warm day.  Pippi would NOT come when called.  Lulu hid under our car but being gullible about food, was finally tempted out.  Phew, One down, One to go . . .  At 6.30 ish I went out (in desperation - my anxiety levels are still very high and kittens are like children - they make you vulnerable) to do some paddock gardening, in the hope that Pippi would come out of hiding.  Indeed she did, leaping over the brambles and long grass and yelling, "here I am, have you missed me?" but when I tried to lure her inside, she was gone again.  Tam found her on the fence out of reach behind some Rhododendrons.  Obviously she wanted to be the Centre of Attention Top Cat and succeeded - imagine my dismay when Lulu, who has only been brave enough to do the cat flap in the past week, suddenly noticed an open door and shot through the cat flap and under the car again.

    We tried bits of food, the schooling whip "lure" (Lulu loves it), but no joy.  Then Pippi came down into the yard and I went inside hoping they would give up, and finally they did.  Oh my goodness, is it any wonder I have blood pressure which isn't as low as it should be? In the evening Pippi came and sat on my lap (something she rarely does) and was very loving and attentive.  Little ratbag!

    We are shortly going for a walk near Erwood, to make the most of this beautiful autumn sunshine.  I am tired as several nights this week I have slept very badly and been awake about 3 hours in the wee small hours.  Hopefully I will unwind tonight.

Here is a happy kitten tonight, doing her upside-down routine!

I hope everyone's been enjoying this sunshine, and if you live in Scotland, haven't floated away.

A family weekend again

 

The lovely old market building at Pembridge (with the pub behind it).  Apparently this was probably had an upper floor in the past.

    Thank you for all your kind comments, which have really helped me.  I have had lovely chats with friends (thanks for phoning, Little Lin) and am happy for life just to be a normal routine at the moment.  In the last week all our kids have been visiting/staying and that's been lovely too, plus good news for two of them about new-to-them jobs.  

    Tam and J are here for the weekend and planning to go to the Autumn Festival on the showground.  I'm not sure if I'm going with them, or whether Keith will be physically up to going to the little Antiques Fair at Llandeilo.  He wants to, but is brewing another bout of that UTI . . .

    Yesterday was a busy day as I went grocery shopping in Llandod in the morning.  I had a wander round the charity shops and got a floor puzzle of counting and numbers for "I" to play with when she comes here and a beautiful green cellular blanket for £5. Dunelm sell them for £32! It's been in the wash and is on my bed already.  It reminds me of the colour of Silver Birch leaves just as they unfurl in early spring.

    Then it was local massage lass time, and she went away with apple baking recipes as she has run out of ideas - in return I get some of the overload of apples she is given!  As she is also a beautician I am going to get my eyebrows (almost non-existent in colour) tinted next time.  I am useless with the eyebrow pencil and can guarantee that I don't have matching eyebrows very often!!

    Then I made a chilli for tea for T&J and baked a Chocolate Apple Cake and used up 3 VERY ripe bananas in a Banana Cake.  Today I'm going to make Apple Dappy for pudding.

    I went to Hay (market day) on Thursday as I wanted some Heritage apples for the fruit bowl (Ribston Pippins came home with me - another tree on the Wanted List for the orchard).  I treated Keith and I to open Danish apple type tarts, laced with icing and got one of the excellent deep Steak and Kidney pies from the butcher which will do us two meals.  I saw our good friend Rob, who knows us well, and he gave very wise advice and said to look on Tuesday's scare as having given us some positives - I know how to cope with a choking episode in future and I didn't panic, and I know to cook bacon to destruction in future too :)  He also said I had to carry on as normal as it would help no-one if I never left the house because of being frightened it could happen when I was away.  There were more words along those lines and he made good sense.  Someone (family or me) will have to be there at meal times but I need to carry on having a few hours off each week for my sanity.

    I resisted temptation to buy books but did buy some felt squares for a project I've been wanting to do for a while (I MUST take myself to task with craftwork I'd like to do/need to finish).  They had the nice blended mix of muted colours I wanted. 

Just look at that chimney stack (on the pub).  Inglenook inside for sure.

Enjoy your weekend all.

999 - A very scary day

 

Beautiful half-timbered house in Pembridge.

Gabby came over yesterday.  I had written a to-do list for all those little jobs which have been neglected and nagging me for weeks (ahem, months some of them) and all but the ironing got ticked off.  

    We discovered that the huge chunk of moss which had slid off the roof needed a Man On a Ladder to sort out and that the down pipe is completely blocked with moss debris too.  Another job for the chap who is coming to put my greenhouse up (he's an Odd Job man.)  I got the loungers away, put the seed stack in the stables too, got Gabby to fix my new-as-of-last-year camera/computer connection as new photos were disappearing though it said they had been loaded. I even got around to dead heading the pink Echinacea and bringing in seed heads to dry for next year's sowing.  

    We checked out the supposed (very convincing) scam email from Ebay which said I couldn't get payouts until I had given them my FULL credit card details, CVC number included.  Do I look that stupid?  It got deleted.

    She set up my Youtube account on Sky and I can now use it (hooray).  I've just bought a Yoga mat and I did my first set of simple moves yesterday which eased my sore back.  Many years since we last did Yoga (we used to go as a family). Pippi decided Yoga couldn't be done unless she was on my back!

    When she'd gone home, I got Keith what he fancied for tea (he doesn't have much of an appetite these days.)  He just wanted some streaky bacon and a fried egg in a roll.  As he was eating it, he suddenly began to choke.  Really badly.  He's had this in the past (since Parkinsons arrived on the scene) with dry biscuits or too-dry toast, but this was throat-blockage.  He struggled desperately to breath and I instantly knew I needed help/advice and phoned 999 and a young man who must have a PhD in calm talked me through what I needed to do whilst he sent us an ambulance.  I had to join my hands into a fist around his body, below his ribs, and then jerk into him to try and dislodge what was stuck.  It took 3 goes before he coughed up a 3" piece of bacon which had apparently stuck to the egg (he'd opened the sandwich up to eat the contents as it was too thick.)  The egg had spread in cooking and had to be folded in half. Oh my goodness, I've never been so scared in my life as at one point, as I was talking on the phone, Keith's arms dropped right down and his body folded forward and I thought he was dead.  With the bacon out, although coughing and spluttering, he was able to breath and speak a tiny bit.

     Just after that, two lovely medics arrived in an ambulance - flat out up our hill, sirens wailing - bet the neighbours know all about it now! They gave Keith a complete check up and he was deemed as not needing to go to hospital.  I am going to have to be very careful about what he has to eat now and make it soft and nothing dry.  At least I didn't panic (like I do over technical problems or legal jargon) but I bet my blood pressure was sky high.  Now we are waiting for the Dr to phone about another more mundane but uncomfortable problem as the Syrup of Figs didn't work for Keith!

    I am having to do a rethink of being away from home (say at Malvern) at Keith's mealtimes and think one of the family will have to be here.

    Gosh, just doing the ironing seems like heaven today as it won't involve anything too demanding.  I need an easy day.

St Mary's Church, Clifford

 Sorry folks, last week didn't improve much with keeping. Keith had his UTI (onto the 2nd lot of antibiotics by then - fortunately these worked.)  I was more than a bit tired and worn out and I just wanted to crawl into a corner with a good book. It was very difficult to even drag myself out of bed each morning - I felt like I'd run a marathon overnight.  

    Danny, Emma and "I" were here this weekend, which cheered me up.  "I" helped me bake some Chocolate Chip Muffins for them to take home, and we discovered she has a new passion - washing up.  She stood on the stool and washed up the same plastic bowl for quite 20 minutes, very happy and chattering to herself :)  Then we did some jigsaw puzzles I'd found in the local charity shop.  I've just ordered several dinosaur ones (all in the same pack) for Christmas.  Danny wants this to be a screen-free house when they visit, so it will be simple toys and then board games as she gets old enough.  They went for a walk in the rain, which then rained MUCH more the longer they were out, and came back soaked.

     Anyway, here is St Mary's Church at Clifford for you.

I presume this was the site of an old preaching cross, now topped with a more modern sundial.

There were a lot of chest tombs in the graveyard - not all as upmarket as this one.  In fact, the whole graveyard was densely "planted" with various tombs so I think this must have served quite a large part of the parish.

The church is 12th and 13th C, and this font dates from that period too.  Restorations were carried out in 1839 and 1888.  HERE are the listing details if you are interested.

The door above is also dedicated to Hubert Bagster Trumper T.D.  It sounds like he was much liked and admired in the county.

The great and the good are remembered.  I liked the castellated memorial two down, though the dedication is hard to see now.

HERE is a link to the family - as you will see families intermarried in this area and a few of them will already be familiar to you.  It really is worth following the link and reading.

This is what I really came to see.  I am thrilled that this effigy has survived down the centuries.  Such a thing is rare - the only other one in the county is at Much Marcle.  He dates from the late 13th C.

In memory of the fallen . . .

A rather splendid church organ.

The manor house, just across the lane.

View across the ploughed fields just before the church.

I am shortly off to view the Monday auction again.  I shall take a good book (and need it!)  It's a shame it doesn't start till mid-afternoon.  Keith is interested in something, so it would cheer him up if I am able to get it.  I am still struggling with low energy levels but at least I will get out and I can leave Keith some nibbles whilst I'm away.

Gabby is coming up to see us tomorrow, and Tam and Jon at the weekend, so that will cheer us up greatly.  Tam and Jon can cover whilst I go off to Malvern on the Sunday.  BFN.

I am here, honest.

 Sorry for the delay in putting up a fresh post.  Life has gotten in the way, and it's been a full on week, one way and another.  Danny, Emma and I here this weekend, and Keith slowly got over his UTI but still had another appt. on Thursday. I shall do a proper post tomorrow, I promise.

Near St Mary's Church, Clifford.

Yuk day and I hate technology

 I didn't want to get up today.  I had no energy, but I could hear Keith moving about. I kept losing words when I was talking to two ladies in the local history group in town (I felt so stupid) and I haven't improved with keeping and would happily go to bed now, just before 7 p.m. but of course I can't.  I lost two hours of my life today trying to sort out tv and wi-fi connection after Ghengis yet again knocked the main remote on the floor by taking a short cut to the sofa across Keith's table.  WHY he can't just jump up on the sofa is beyond me!

When we FINALLY got it sorted (after I had phoned our broadband supplier, typed in the router number several times with all its upper and lower case and numbers - GRRR - reset the router to factory reset etc) there was no Netflix and it wanted me to take out another subscription - I was gnashing my teefs until I realized we had it through Sky, who had offered it cheaper than Netflix do.  No wonder I didn't have a password in my little red book . . .

Pippi has been bringing in tiny voles (3) and then got me very cross when she bought in a butterfly (there were lots in the garden today) and then a 2nd and when I found a 3rd under the settle I shut her in for an hour or so.  I can't forgive her for taking their power of flight away by batting them about.  I've saved two bumble bees this week but it doesn't balance out those beautiful butterflies.

I guess something had to balance out the nice afternoon I had yesterday when I went to the first auction I'd been to since Lockdown - not that it was full of classy stuff and as I thought, anything decent didn't go cheaply.  The things I liked were towards the end too and I wasn't hanging around for hours (it didn't start till 3.30 p.m.) and driving home in the dark.  So I bid unsuccessfully on two items and went back into Pembridge to go round the church.  I shall leave you with a photo of the amazing bell tower - I have never seen its like.  Built in the early 13th C using HUGE trees, it was later enclosed.  I'll do a proper post later in the week, when hopefully I am more with it.

This is one of 12 lovely embroideries inside the church and shows the construction of the bell tower.  I love the idea of a Cowslip Fair too.