Christmas present and past

I went to a lovely big family party yesterday, without leaving the comfort of my own armchair. Through the magic of the internet and the presence of a small built in webcam on my laptop I was able to talk face to face to several of my relatives who I have not seen for years (and in some cases years and years) I stay in touch with some of them by phone, more or less, and there's always the Christmas card, but, due to circumstances beyond my control, I don't manage to get to the December get together and haven't done for quite a long time. I saw about 15 people over about 45 minutes and it was great to see them. I don't know if they realised just how much it meant to me. We seem to have got a bit isolated out here in the wilds of Suffolk over recent years, every body is getting older and has more immediate family commitments.
We used to have such lovely Christmases when I was little, at least that's what I remember. However, I suspect that, in part at least, that is because I wasn't involved in the preparation. All you do as a child is open the presents and eat the chocolates and play the games. You do not have to cook the turkey and time the dinner and do all the washing up.
We , including the grown ups, used to play a lot of games, like charades and any new member, girlfriend, spouse etc was submitted to the test of certain games where only those in the know knew what was going on. Do "Boots Without Spurs" or "Black Magic" or "Passing the Scissors Crossed" mean anything to anyone?
My Aunt's house was full of people, there were Christmases when people slept on any available bit of floor, that happened at our house too sometimes. And I still have my teddy that my mum and dad gave me when I was about 3 and which was almost as big as me then.

A Mystery Solved!

Something slightly spooky happened yesterday.
Do you have clear memories of places or events which you cannot place? I have a few and one of them is walking along a badly lit, very long, corridor in a basement, with lots of wires and pipes running along the length of the ceiling and a room where people were sitting a drinking coffee. It is such a clear picture in my mind but until yesterday I wasn't even sure if it was somewhere I had really been or something I had dreamt. Then I watched a programme about the history of The Battle of Britain. It was on a few nights ago but I had taped it. The commentator was talking about a place where German pilots who had been shot down were taken, prior to being placed in camps. The name of the place was Trent Park which is where my father went to Teacher Training College in the early 1960s. I had been with my father several times, when he had to be at college and I was on half term holiday. I recognised the big staircase and entrance hall. And then, on the screen I saw my corridor, as the presenter of the programme walked along it. It did exist! The room had been a student's common room. It was a very odd feeling.
HERE is a photo of the building

Now if only I could pin down when and where and why I helped someone paint an old merry-go-round horse!

Alphabe-Thursday Mood Indigo

A rather short post from me this week as it has been one of THOSE weeks. I have joined up to Spotify and thought I would have a look to see how many recordings of Mood Indigo there are and there are loads. I can't choose which one to suggest. Sinatra, Ellington, Fitzgerald, Mingus, Day, Lyttleton, I could go on. They all have their merits. So I had a look at YouTube as well and decided on This one

Or this one if you want to know the words

More indigo HERE

Alphabe-Thursday Summer Blue

Jenny's summer school is more than half way through now. It is beginning to feel like autumn here already, our summer has been too short this year and I hope it is going to give us a second chance before it gives up altogether. This week we have reached the colour blue
I love the blue of the sky in high summer, I love the blue of cobalt glass, I love the blue of cornflowers. But I don't wear blue very often, and here's the reason why

Something like this little chart hung on the wall of the Art Room when I was in the Sixth Form at school. (Sixth Form is the last two years, aged 16/17 and 17/18) When I started there the uniform rules were very strict. White shirt, navy with a thin blue diagonal stripe tie, navy gored skirt which should touch the floor when kneeling, navy blazer etc etc and the most unflattering pale blue cotton dress for summer. I can't even bring myself to talk about the hat. Anyway, the uniform changed when I was about 15 and then the rules eased off even more and we were told that, within reason, we could wear anything blue or white in our last term. This was the term when we would be doing our final school exams so we were no longer prefects at that stage. And of course, girls being girls, we all pushed the limits of what could or could not be described as blue and so the art mistress put a chart up on the wall and if there was any doubt you had to go and get her to match your clothing against the chart and got into trouble if you didn't coincide with the top line (blues that were blue) but had strayed too close to the next two lines (blues that were greeny blue or mauvey blue) The colours haven't quite come out as I intended but you get the idea. So when I left school I avoided blue because I was just too fed up with it and here I am nearly 40 years later and I still don't choose it!

Maybe I will find something to change my mind HERE

A-T Summer Rainbow RED

Over at Alphabe-Thursday it is the school holidays but Mrs Matlock, being a hard task-mistress, has given us homework to do so we are now going through the colours of the rainbow. Yes, here in the UK we spell it "colour", I didn't make a mistake Mrs M!

So I thought about the colour red and looked round my house and garden and thought some more and then I remembered that somewhere I had some photos of my old cars.

Let me introduce you to PGT 427E.

I bought this car in 1976 and it was quite old then. It was the first car I owned after passing my driving test. Technically I had owned a Morris Minor before that because I had lent my dad the money to buy it and he drove it and gave me some lessons but it was sold before I was able to drive it on my own.

"Piglet" was a Triumph Herald Estate. It had no heater, no radio, no power assisted anything and rack and pinion steering which was famous for giving it a wheel lock like a London taxi, which meant you could turn it full circle in not much more than its own length. It was therefore a really easy car to park. It had a walnut veneered dashboard though and I loved it. It cost me £80 and I sold it for £25 two years later. Funny how I can't remember the registration of any other old cars but always remember the first

Now I have a little question for my American readers. Is it the case that you do not eat runner beans? Someone told me that you grow scarlet runners like this for the flowers but don't eat the pods and I didn't believe them. Here's one I have grown but the beans aren't setting very well this year, maybe because there don't seem to be many bees about.

HERE is where you can see what "Red" has brought to other minds

Alphabe-Thursday. Z is for Zebayda

First of all a big thank you to everyone who came to the birthday party last week (Y is for.....) and if you missed it there's still some leftovers in the fridge so do pop in!) Thank you to for the lovely presents.
Now let me tell you about Zebayda
It's curious how things jump into your mind sometimes. I have a very visual memory and pictures suddenly appear behind my eyes and take me back more years than I care to admit. The letter Z (and where I come from we say Zed, not Zee) suddenly took me back nearly 50 years to a place that was then called The Hutton Residential School. I can see myself in a corridor painted that institutional green that many Brits will know and loathe. The corridor was actually a hallway in a large Victorian house and the house itself felt very friendly. The HRS was a place where children from the London Borough of Poplar who came from difficult backgrounds, broken families or who were orphans, were cared for. My mum and dad had befriended a boy who lived there - why is a whole other story which I might find a slot for next time round - and so we used to go there for tea sometimes. I would be sent off to be with the other chldren while my parents had tea with the matron and I was a bit apprehensive as an only child, suddenly finding myself, albeit temporarily, as part of a very big family.
Now Zebayda was the first black person that I ever met. Where I grew up, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, black faces were not commonly seen. Her father was part of a singing group, an English version of The Inkspots, but her mother was dead and so she stayed at the School while he was on tour. She was a year or two older than me and watched out for me when I was there. I never stayed the night but I guess my mum and dad thought it would be an experience to see how they lived in that place. It always felt full of love and I hope that it was.
HERE'S what other people made of the letter Z

H is for.......

Come in, come in, take off your coat, sit here in this chair, no, not that one, that's MOTHER'S chair. Well now that I have lured you, little innocent that you are, into my strange blog (you really would have thought that you would have known better) and now that the door has closed mysteriously and of its own accord behind you, I will tell you that H is for........

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, ooops, sorry, forgive the maniacal laughter

H is for Hammer Horror Films

Don't worry, you are quite safe, you are the heroine so you will survive, albeit traumatised for a minute or two. You only have to worry if you are second billing, the friend of the heroine, or the slightly dozy servant girl from the village, then you will be what is known in the trade as an STBT character (soon to be toast)

When I was in my teens I had a little black and white television in my bedroom, on which I would watch late night films. In those days television still went off in the early hours, none of this 24 hour stuff, and on a Friday night there would be a good old fashioned horror film that went on until after midnight. Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing were the three main protagonists, although you will find it difficult to name a film in which all three appeared. (As far as I am aware there are only two) The formula was pretty straightforward. Innocents abroad have to spend night in creepy location for whatever reason and are either preyed upon by monster/vampire in situ or provide the means for said m/v to travel to a more populated location and cause havoc among the friends and relations of said innocents. Or mad scientist experiments with electricity and soft tissue, or strange virus from space and creates something nasty in the laboratory which then escapes and causes havoc among his friends and relations.

Dracula featured heavily in my favourites but the thing about them was that they were not gory or horrific, they were just a bit spooky or scary and lots of fun. Identifying the STBTs was a good game, continued into my Star Trek days when they became STBTEs (soon to be toast Ensign) They were also great fun for spotting people in their younger days who became famous later on. That game was called "Good heavens it's him/her"

So there I would be in my little bed watching my little B&W tele in the wee small hours in my formative teenage years and you wonder how I grew up to be the well balanced intelligent individual that you see before you now? hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Other more sane people will have posted their H's for Alphabe-Thursday at Jenny Matlocks Blog, now that the US has caught up with us HERE is the link

Alphabe-Thursday F is for Ferries

At least one person I know is going to know where this is leading. As I think about ferries I find myself wandering off into all sorts of nostalgia.


REEDHAM FERRY

Reedham Ferry is just down the road from the house where my mother's cousin and his wife used to live in a place called Nogdam End, Norton Subcourse (I haven't included the name of the house, although he sadly passed away some time ago and his wife doesn't live there any more) It is a funny little boat that is pulled across the river on a big chain and saves a trip of about 30 miles. It takes ages and you can go on foot or by car. This is a post card of the old ferry, I think there is a newer one now. All very unhurried because it saves nearly an hour of driving. When I was a lot younger I used to go to our cousin's house and have wonderful meals and drink their own wine made from their own grapes (yes! in Norfolk!) with my mum and granddad and it was a lovely walk to the ferry along a country lane that was, weirdly, below the level of the river, so boats would go past and you would have to look UP at them


ON THE DOVER - OSTENDE FERRY

This next picture was going to be the one of me at the age of 14 on the Dover to Ostende ferry on a school trip to Germany. It was a long journey and a step back in time when we got there. The school my school was twinned with was in Southern Germany and everything was like the 1950s or so it seemed. I have just spent half an hour trying to find said photo but so many are stashed away in shoe boxes waiting to be sorted out I have given up. However, this is one that I took on that trip in 1969 from the rail. I got very sea sick below decks so froze in the fresh air. I fell in love with a boy called Klaus who had a lovely dark green courduroy jacket and danced with me a lot because I was the only one of the English girls who knew the Polka


PULLS FERRY - NORWICH

This one is Pulls Ferry which is in Norwich, you can see the cathedral in the background. My granddad grew up in the late 19th Century in Norwich and told some grand tales. We used to visit him a lot and I still love going there. Norwich Cathedral is wonderful and the Castle Museum is fascinating and the old parts of the City just gorgeous. I haven't been for a long time - must make the effort again.

And so to the most important ferry of them all
Have you guessed?



BRYAN FERRY

I have loved Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry for the last 35 years and more. I still listen to their music and enjoy it even though my tastes in music have expanded over the years and tend towards the classical. The early albums take me back to the back garden of my friend Marion's house when we were still care free teenagers. A lot of water has passed under a lot of ferries since then!

You can see what other folk have written here

C is for Catalogues and Choirs

The letter we have reached in the Alphabe-Thursday Challenge is C
C is for catalogues (or, for my friends across the pond, catalogs) and choirs Do you remember the excitement of going through the mail order catalogue when it came, just to see what you might want to buy? Maybe you still do it. I used to go down to my Aunt's and sit with her and her daughter and scour the pages for something to spend my money on - those were the days eh? I particularly remember some awful polyester trousers in garish colours, with polyester jumpers that matched. This was when I had an allowance from my parents that I had to make do for all my personal needs, good training for money management. Then after I started work I ran two catalogues myself and made quite a nice little bit of money from them.
The first thing I bought from a catalogue was in 1969. It was a black evening dress, shirt style top, ankle length sunray pleated skirt and little diamante buttons and buckle to the belt. I paid £4 19s 11d over 20 weeks. Does this require translation? In 1969 we had not yet gone decimal in our coinage so you say that "Fourteen pounds nineteen shillings and eleven pence" And that was very expensive. The reason I bought it was that I needed a full length black dress to sing in my first proper choir. I had been in the school choir and as my voice was quite low I used to sing tenor sometimes (all girls you see) but started off as a soprano so I could sit with my mum when I joined the Billericay Choral Society aged 14. The first work we sang was Medelssohn's Elijah. It was a choir that sang oratorio most of the time and I loved it. I soon found my confidence and switched to the altos. Then imagine my delight when a few years later my first love (another C for Clive - he looked a lot like Hank Marvin) took over as accompanist. He had been my piano teacher until he went to college. My passion was not reciprocated by the way, poor Clive, these days I would probably have been arrested for being a teenage stalker.
Sorry if I find it difficult to stick to one subject, some letters bring so many things to mind. If you have time, please read my Mission Statement (link in my profile)as it is something I feel very strongly about at the moment
And if you would like to see some other bloggers take on "C" go HERE

B is for Blackberrying

This is a new meme wot I am going to do, called Alphabe-Thursday, only I haven't quite got the hang of all the linking that is required. And I haven't yet worked out how to put the logo in my side bar. Sorry I missed last week but I do have a note from my mum. Anyway, as my blog tries to stay positive at all times I am planning on participating in this Alphabe-Thursday with happy and nostalgic posts. When I was little I really hated school and sometimes my mum would see I was so distressed that she would let me stay at home for the day. It was usually worse after the long summer break and we would go blackberrying across the fields near where we lived. Mum and I used to walk a lot together as she didn't drive so we knew a lot of the places where you could get lovely fruit away from the exhaust fumes from the traffic (which in those days were laden with lead) and she would make blackberry jelly with them. It had to be jelly because the pips in jam got under father's plate (false teeth, you see) We used to make little talismans out of cloves wrapped in a bit of muslin to keep the wasps away as we were both very frightened of wasps. It works, you know! And we would walk and walk and identify the wild flowers and try to identify the trees and sometimes we would find ourselves somewhere we hadn't been before.
If you would like to read other people's take on the letter B go to Alphabe-Thursday Letter B
And if you are visiting me for the first time please feel free to look around at this and my crafty blog Not Cute and Not Funny

Fit for nothing

A few of my Tweeting friends have decided that getting fit might be a good idea and I have decided that it might be too. If you are a stranger and a tweeter you can try #f450 to see what we are on about. Because I have back problems I have gradually reduced the number of activities in which I engage and walking is about the only exercise I get now. I used to fence, which is a great sport for people with bad backs because it helps develop good posture, but it also develops the calf muscles to an alarming degree! I used to play badminton years and years ago but have no one to play with anymore. At school I played cricket (quite a good all rounder) and rounders ( liked fielding at 1st deep as the ball hardly ever came my way) and netball (Goal Attack) I was forced to play hockey in the winter (cruel and unnnatural punishment) and always seemed to end up playing a small butch girl who we will call Christine (because that was her name) I soon realised that the only way I was ever going to cope was to let her go gallopping off up the field and just wait until she came back again. I am grateful that we did not do cross-country or lacrosse like the convent girls did. I never learnt to swim but my greatest triumph was beating said Christine in the float race because she couldn't swim either.
So, at the moment all I am promising is that I will try to do my exercises every day, and walk more and cut back on the unnecessary calories and we'll see how it goes. I will report on how many pounds and how many inches round my middle I have lost but am not going to admit the starting points for either. I carry all before me which I am told is the most unhealthy shape there is. Hey ho.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

On the fifth Day of Christmas at my friend Grethic's party we have been invited to share some interesting fund raising ideas for fetes and the like. I can't say that I can offer anything novel or original but it did get me quite "soggy with nostalgia" as Tom Lehrer would say and I started thinking back to the wonderful fetes held byu the Friends of St Andrew's Hospital in the Billericay of my childhood. Now when I was a child Billericay was quite a small town, it was long before all the development that is there now and not in the least the place that is lampooned in Gavin and Stacey. There was a hall called The Archer Hall on the corner that was Sun Corner and where my first tentative steps in mateur dramatics were taken, and next to it was a big field where the Hospital Fete was held once a year. My dad was often the MC for the day and, of course, rolled out the old one about a fete worse than death! There were lots of games to play - guess the weight of the cake, a coconut shy, rolling pennies down a little slope thing to see if it landed inside a square and won you a prize (these are what a lady in a shop the other day described to me as those big brown coins - did that make me feel old!)tipping the lady out of bed, tombola, and lots of other things too. And there was the fancy dress competition. One year my mum and dad made me a costume to look like Marina (no, this was a long time before Last of the Summer Wine) She was Troy Tempest's girlfriend in "Stingray" She never spoke and she had a green floaty dress and green hair and a big pearl on a chain round her neck. They dyed a hair piece and made the dress and dad fashinoned the pearl out of a candle stub and I came second. Later I found out that I didn't come first because they thought we must have hired the costume.
So, if it isn't too late, maybe I could suggest a fancy dress competition?
By the way, I am working on a poem but it's going to have to wait until the party is over.

We are Famileee

Had such a great day today. My cousins Christine and Helen came to visit. I haven't seen Chris for about 10 years, when we met when mum and I visited mum's sister (C&H's mum)Auntie Joan (see My Auntie Joan ) just after she had her second stroke. Before that I saw them both at my wedding. Chris and I are within a year in age and we used to get together as teenagers, and before that when we were smaller I used to go and stay with them for a week in the school holidays. Throughout our lives we have met up again and just picked up where we left off and it happened again today. After coffee and mince pies courtesy of the local baker and cake which I made myself we went over to Felixstowe to visit my mum, then back here for lunch and then I took them for a walk round the Heath. My Uncle was in the RAF in WW2 so I showed them a bit of tarmac so they could tell him about it. Then we looked at some old photos and got very nostalgic. It's just been a brill day and they have promised to come again soon and we had BIG HUGS.

Oh Dr Beeching......

For reasons that are not very positive and therefore have no place here, I haven't been very inspired this week and so even skipped Sunday Stealing and my two arty challenges. But last night I was reminded of a happy time when I watched a terrific little jewel of a programme called Railway Walks. In it the presenter, a very healthy young woman called Julia, walks along stretches of disused railway lines, mostly ones that were closed down by Dr Beeching in the early 1960s when the railways were "rationalised" and the seed was sown for the chaos and utter horror of driving on our now far too busy and congested roads. As my mum never learnt to drive we used to travel on trains a lot and whn I started work I used to travel around by train a lot too for my job (but that's another story) What I was particularly reminded of though was that my grandfather bought a house that had been a crossing keeper's house and I remember walking along the old line and the lovely scenery and the fascinating assortment of small skeletons left by the numerous animals that had met their demise under the wheels of a train years previously. I'm not sure how much of this will resonate with my non-English readers. The places where the line crossed the road were, back in the day, controlled by a man who lived in a house by the side of the line and had to physically go out and close the gates across the road when a train was coming, no automation. And as a child it was the most exciting thing to come along and find the road barred and know that a train was going to hurtle across, even though you might have to wait 10 minutes for it to do so. I find myself back on the bench seat of a old Rover, the smell of leather upholstery and the gleam of the Bakelite knobs. Aha, that's provided me with the idea for a picture to put at the top of this... I'll have to tell you about all the wonderful old cars we had another day.
And the song?
"Oh, Dr Beeching, what shall I do
I wanted to go to Birmingham and they've taken me off to Crewe
Send me back to London
As quickly as you can
Oh Dr Beeching what a silly girl I am."

My Auntie Joan

This is a positive story, in accordance with the ethos of this blog, although it may seem sad to start with. My mum's sister died this morning. Her daughter rang me at about 8:00 to let me know and we have spoken again this evening. Auntie Joan had a stroke about 10 years ago which took away her speech and paralysed her down one side but she remained cheerful and positive. Later she had to go to a home when it became too difficult for her husband to look after her, even with carers coming in three times a day and in the last few weeks she had deteriorated a lot and gone into hospital. But she had a strong faith, as do many of her family. I am glad she is over her pain and I am glad that I and her husband and my mum and many others can be so sure that she is in a better place and that we will all be together again one day. I do really believe that.
Anyway, we have been thinking today about her and about some fun memories and I'd like to share a couple.
I used to go and stay for a week in the summer holidays when I was a lot younger and one year I totally disgraced myself. After I had come home Joan phoned my mum. She had tried to get her younger daughter to put on her new pyjamas and she had said "I don't want those bl**dy things on" She was about 5 or 6. Joan, horrified, asked why she had said it. "Well, Janet says it"
We used to go and visit quite often in the day time, mum and me. We would get off the train and then walk along a long road which got a bit much for my little legs. I can feel myself now, holding my mummy's hand, somewhere about my shoulder level and the feeling of rejection when she said I was too heavy for her to carry! But I loved visiting, There was the tree we used to climb in the track at the back of their house, the hedgehog we found in the garden, my cousin going over the fence into the school gounds next door and nearly getting caught and the night my Uncle put fat in the little boiler that made the hot water tank boil so that steam came out of the taps. I shall have to write all this down for my cousin, as I don't know if she remembers it all. I did tell her something today that she didn't know, which my mum told me and that was that her mum threw a whole rice pudding at her dad not long after they were married, dish and all. She was really happy I told her about that and is sharing it with her sister and their children.
Rest in Peace Auntie Joan

Monday Miscellany

Today has been a days of several parts. In accordance with tradition, Monday is washing day in this household, although it is so easy when you have a machine to do it that it hardly seems a chore. No boiler to be lit and brought up to temperature, no yellow soap to rub on the collars and cuffs, no soda to redden your already chapped hands, no steam filled kiitchen, no mangle to trap the baby's fingers and no sheets to heave in and out of the bath tub. Aren't I lucky - I hope you are too.
In the afternoon I go to Bible Study at the Vicarage. I go for my lovely walk through the woods to get there (and back again) and today was dry and sunny.
Now I have to bring my brain to bear on an award wot I have been awarded. My friend easternsparkle sent me this award and now I have to get my head round the rules of acceptance which are:-
1. Thank the person who gave this to you ....Thanks Sparkle

2. Copy the logo and place it in your blog - Done!

3. Link the person who nominated you Easternsparkle


4. Name 7 things about yourself that no one would really know
OK, I'll go for the things that the people reading this probably wouldn't know
1. My mum was convinced I was going to be a boy and I was going to be called Mark
2. My big round vaccination mark is on the sole of my right foot
3. I knew a murderer
4. I went to the same school as the actress Joan Sims (but not at the same time!)
5. My mother's cousin invented OMO
6. I have had a conversation with Cliff Richard
7. I have never seen "The Sound of Music"

5. Nominate 7 bloggers for the award, post links to their blogs and leave a comment to tell them that they have been nominated

Now I have a problem here because I am not a very busy blogger and so almost all the blogs I know seem to have already had the award from someone else so you'll have to make do with this one for the time being and then I'll add some more when I find them.

Illustrations vert pistache

This was going to be a film review but.....

Monday is washing and shopping in the morning and Bible Study in the afternoon. It has been drizzly today, very autumnal, but cold and damp. On the walk to the Vicarage I saw a lot of those spider's webs all picked out with the rain drops. Next misty morning we get I shall be out there with the camera. Hubby still feeling a bit grotty when I got home so put my feet up in front of the tele with the CD of Frost/Nixon. I enjoyed it. I remember all the fuss at the time so for me it was interesting to find out a bit about the background. Also, I am a Frank Langella fan. He was gorgeous about 35 years ago in "Dracula" but hasn't made many films, he's more a stage actor I think. And I knew David Frost's mum. His father was the minister at Beccles Methodist Church (before I was there) and his mum lived in Beccles and was a member of the congregation at the same time I was. I liked her. I remember watching That Was The Week That Was, with Millicent Martin in her lovely black cocktail dresses singing the topical song every week. Do I really remember the one when JFK was assasinated or is it just that I have seen it since? Did I say I enjoyed the film? Yes, well I do recommend it.

Ladies who lunch #1

When I was doing a proper job in the 1980s lunch was part of the package. In those days there was an almost bottomless petty cash box and I was expected to take out and be taken out by diverse bank managers, estate agents, the occasional barrister, property developers and the like. As a then single girl it was very useful as I didn't have to cook when I got home but it did mean being nice to people that I might not have otherwise chosen to spend time with (except that barrister, he was gorgeous) Now I have the infinitly more pleasant experience of only spending my occasional lunches out with people who I have chosen and, strange though it may seem, who have chosen me.
Today was my second lunch with she of the random ramblings. We were going to go to Arlingtons again but they were very full so we went back to a little place (positively bijou, my dear) that I had seen earlier and graced them with our presence instead. RR knows how to do the thingy with the link, I must find out how myself sometime, so you will have to visit her blog (see right) to get there but it was called Morgans and is in Arcade Street. Two hours fled by and we learned some more about each other and smiled sweetly at the two ladies who were running the joint as we interrupted their tea when we left.
When I got home it was to find that my new printer had arrived with its promise of hours of fun and frolics trying to get it installed. In fact all seems to have gone well so I can start playing with that tomorrow after Sunday Stealing.

Bank Holidays

As I don't normally work on a Monday the Bank Holidays tend to pass me by. However, hubby feeling a bit crook today so I sat in the garden and read (Colin Thubron's Shadow of the Silk Road) after I'd hung the washing out. Brilliant blue sky and my usually too shady border was just right. Also had a little wander round Paris on Google Maps Street View, which is just what an armchair traveller like me needs. I tried to find the places I stayed when I was a lot younger. I was lucky enough to have a couple of holidays in Paris crashing out on various people's floors - ah those were the days.

Last of the Sweet Peas

Although it isn't even September yet(well not quite) things in my garden seem to be packing up shop and going home already. I know these sweet peas are probably quite late and they put on a great show for me this year but I wish they would last a little longer. Do you associate a particular flower with a particular person. The sweet peas are my mother's sister, her husband grew them for competition and he often gave her some to put in the house. Anenomes are my nan and freesias are a good friend's mum. My mum is forget-me-nots.Not sure what I am, I'll let you know!