How things change.

Phew tis 'ot, so yesterday we struggled to have our Monday 'Diane' session. Diane was our cleaner in Suffolk, she was ok and it helped to have her, when we were first there, as I had those two operations on my arm and shoulder and could do very little, so any cleaning was better than none. She was a very pleasant young woman and brought us the gossip of the town!

But here we can do our own cleaning and apart from the lounge we have laminate flooring, so this little mop is ideal and as it is light I can use it left handed. My step daughter who has laminate flooring agreed it was a 'whizz' to use. I laughed so much when she said how she loved hers. A young woman agreeing to like a floor clearing mop!

40 years ago when I was in College as a Mature student studying for my degree, the young straight out of school girls were horrified, when I said I'd had a food mixer as my Christmas present.  Little did they know, I was grateful my then husband had given me anything, and thinking about it now, there is a good probability he was given it by a firm he did business with.

They thought it was awful that my present was a household one. 

In my eyes it was a dream come true, a food mixer!! As far as I was concerned I'd reached the dizzy heights of the upper classes! And it made super Victoria Sponges.

How things have changed,  my young step daughter loving  a floor mop! What about you, would you mind a present that was a household one?

Chrisxx

 

 

Not the visit they expected..

 Sunflowers, roses and agapanthus, a beautiful bouquet from my young step daughter and her husband, but it wasn't the only gift they gave us, when they visited at the weekend. 

It's nearly a year since we've seen them, so they were amazed to see all the changes. We would have had more than one picture up on  the walls too, except as Dh explained our drill gave up the ghost Friday when he was re-doing the house number on the outside wall. I had bought the drill, when I bought my first house, after my divorce over 30 years ago, so I've had my moneys worth from it.

While they were looking around and admiring the garden, they saw the shed parts waiting to be built.

Right away T said he'd help to build it. So they picked up a drill we ordered on the Sunday morning and Dh and T built the shed and K and I cooked the Sunday dinner! 

Such a help to us to get that shed done, Dh would never had been able to do it himself.

My stepdaughter and I got on fine in the kitchen together, a bit like old times! And the roast pork dinner was delicious!

Chrisxx

'Wool Gathering'

I've sat in my garden enjoying my flowers 'wool gathering' just thinking and dreaming. A lot of the flowers and plants are from seed or cuttings, but some have come with me across the years from other gardens and I love it.

 One of my favourites is penstemon, I have five! And I love the scent of phlox

I dream 'what ifs'; would my life have been very different if my mother had lived? I hope so, my childhood was pretty miserable, but I loved school, especially in my senior school, where because my aunt paid for me, I was a boarder.. I laugh thinking about it, because I read the Girls Friend comic where the girls were in a boarding school. Very very middle class but I wasn't at all, very far from it.

  My grandmother ran a B&B and there were occasions when all the bedrooms were let out to the visitors and my aunty and I slept on camp beds in the shed, which leaked!! So we had rubber mats, (no plastic in 1940s) over us and umbrellas!!

But it was the life I knew and for all its difficulties, I'm here now and living the rewards of that education. 

I've enjoyed my 'wool gathering,' do you day dream?

Chrisxx

Some answers about me!

 I popped along and visited some blogs, new to me this week.. and was asked by one lady who I was, so here's some facts...

I'm now classed as old, being 79 years and I won't lie and say I don't feel my age physically, because some days I jolly well do! I have arthritis but take pain killers so keep it under control. Breaking my arm which hasn't healed properly 7 years ago, changed my life completely and added to my difficulties.  And I have this annoying over active bladder, so I know all the nicer toilets to go to, when we're out.

I live a very happily with my lovely husband to whom I have been married for 16 years in July. We are Christians and share our daily Bible readings.

I met him through the internet, it wasn't a dating site, but a pen pal site.. we started writing in 2004 and met up after a year and married a year later.. other pen pals have fallen by the way side, except for a lovely lady in Australia, who I have met and we still write.

We now live in Wales, the town where I was born and have been in this bungalow just one year and a few days. We love it here!

We have 7 children between us, all grown and flown and 6 grand children. They all live a  fair distance from us, so we don't see them that often.

I love gardening and reading, but struggle a bit with the garden these days, but do some gentle weeding and grow most of our plants from seed. I sew, quilt, knit, crochet and still cross stitch some days. 

I am always trying to lose weight, altho' I was never over weight when I was younger. We follow the Slimming World plan and when we keep to it, it works.

I do have regrets about my past life, the main one being I never had a normal childhood. My mother died when I was two, and my father remarried, so I never really knew him. I was brought up by my Victorian maternal grand parents and my mothers' two unmarried sisters, who lived with us. I was often pushed from pillar to post, so I longed for a normal family. What saved  me was,  when I was 12, one of my aunts paid for me to go to a private school as a weekly boarder and I loved it!

When I left school with my School Certificate with passes in 11 subjects I trained as a SRN.. But after I was first married and with 4 children this didn't fit in with our life, so age 39 I went to a College affiliated with the London University and got a degree in Education and spent the next 24 years teaching, which I loved.  I eventually retired when I was 64 and married Dh.

I think the happiest days of my younger life was when my children were little, I loved being a mother and made them clothes and played happy families with them. What are your happiest times?

I can be very emotional and cry easily, especially watching News programmes, so sometimes avoid them.

But all in all I am very satisfied with my life, especially living where we are now and how we live. What about you, are you happy with your life?

We pop out for walks and coffees, love our dog Nell and generally do as we please.. some days, shock horror we go out to enjoy the sunshine and walk along the prom, leaving our bed unmade! Have you ever done this?

Here's Nell sun bathing, she's 13 years old now.

So that's me!

Chrisxx

We are such 'Numpties!!'

 We are such a pair of 'numpties'. The reading group we've joined here,  is on the third Wednesday of the month, which we missed this month, because the 1st of June was a Wednesday, hence when we thought it was the afternoon meeting, we were a week late! 

I was so annoyed because we were to discuss this book. I read it when it was first published 2017. Although I could remember the gist of the story, I was happy to read it again and I am really glad I did, because I loved it even more than my first time reading! And I found new bits in it which quite surprised me.

If you haven't read this book I would recommend that you do. Eleanor is a young woman of 30 who works in an office Monday to Friday and spends her weekends alone with two bottles of Vodka! She wears the same clothes and eats the same food, week in week out, in fact she appears to lead a very simple life. But she is a wonderful character, and I laughed out loud several times. I really loved her and wanted the best for her. Her story was sad, but I was rooting for her and felt for her loneliness. She tried so hard to fit in and did all sorts of things to achieve that, taking the advice of shop girls to dress, as she thought she should,  to attract someone to whom she took a fancy. Her way of speaking was like that of someone on the Aspergist spectrum, so people thought her odd.  I liked her directness and it made me question why we don't acknowledge the odd bods of life,  as they have the most interesting stories to tell. I would have been proud to call Eleanor my friend, she was brilliant and I was so pleased when Raymond was introduced into the story. Do read it if you can.

I've given you my opinion of this book,  so its not so bad that I missed the Reading Group after all!

Chrisxx

PS, Next month's meeting is 22nd July, we have the date written down, to discuss 'The Followers' A book set in the future, great, can't wait to read it.

Raining.

Yesterday the temperature was 28°C at 9:00am! We did sit out in the garden for our morning coffee under an umbrella, but even then it was too hot. The garden was wilting and we were sad to see that there is only one peach left on the tree, all the others have dropped, ah well,  we can share again! We have had some delicious ones. The one left on the tree is the size of a 'gobstopper' We check it daily watching to see if it will grow this big!

Today we have rain, yeh!!! We really need it and we're very pleased, altho it means we won't go to the library. I have always visited the library on a Saturday morning, but here the walk from the nearest car park would mean getting very wet!

So we're cosy inside drinking coffee and watching, 'The Detectorists' on iplayer, which we've watched before, but we like it enough to watch again. What do you do on rainy Saturdays?

It's not a bad life!

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi4064982297/?ref_=vp_rv_0

                                                 Chrisxx

1 year and 3 days!

 A very sunshiny day in the garden, which is beginning to fill up with our plants, lots grown from seed on the window sills. 

I missed getting a photograph when this white foxglove was in full flower, now it's like the leaning tower!

I love lupins and these have thrown up side shoots.

Lots of pots with plants that were overwintered in the garage here, and pots with gladiolas, which are grown just for Dh as he loves them,

We are delighted with the growth in our garden as there was only weedy grass here when we moved in exactly 12 months and 3 days ago! This was it, an empty plot!

We have had a lot done, wooden steps built outside the French doors, electrics with extra wall sockets, new TV aerial, new bathroom, new kitchen, decorated through out and carpet in the lounge, new French doors and new lounge window, outside lights and of course reducing the front hedge from 8ft to 4ft!

A new front door is planned and booked for next week.

It has taken a lot out of us. We're not at an age where lugging furniture around comes easy! The carpet was laid this week and apart from bringing the furniture back into the lounge we've not done anything else. We needed a rest!

So plan of action is this coming week:-

To do one thing and complete it; so its going to be the hall. We have our bookcase and a selection of pictures and the ceiling light fitting to sort.

Then the second bedroom.. which just needs a couple of boxes taken out and two pictures put up and a curtain rail. We bought the rail this week and we have the curtains.. We think these are the easiest things to do.

Tackling the end bedroom will be a big job and we'll have to do it in stages as all the extra kitchen stuff, books, pictures and lamps are stored in there.

But considering all that was needed here we think we've done really well. Getting tradesmen was the hardest! But we're very pleased with everything thats been done. Photos of the kitchen coming soon.

Chrisxx

I think this was my favourite

 

Click to open to you tube and then click again.

                                               https://youtu.be/7UfiCa244XE

Chrisxx

70 years!

                                 It was our Queen's day...

 These looked adorable...

And he stole the show!!

And didn't she look beautiful?

What a day.

An amazing show to celebrate the Queen's platinum jubilee, which will never happen again in our country.

                                           A glorious day.

                                I loved watching it, did you?

Chrisxx

A morning in town

The sun was shining, and we bought some Welsh cakes, just 2 as altho its cheaper to buy 6 we can't trust ourselves! They make them in the shop window so you can watch, but the scent is so tempting, we just pop in, buy 2 and leave!

Today the town looks very pretty as all the baskets and tubs have been planted up and they are lovely.

We stopped to watch these again, called Street Wise, they collect for different charities.

Just click on the link below and then click on the picture.. a real treat

https://www.facebook.com/groups/119020938751189/?hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen&multi_permalinks=989259145060693&__cft__[0]=AZVcm_8Ep_AjNcpf9JvH9r8oHsN9PKom89UcvB-NtXGSNoxxvlmejvpcw1x0L5Lb-psqkJEYCpWF2waUj0yoIDKXryDvlsTwXgHCLckgu1XeoCvYCtnMiDAqIJTeEUCOZoyA_3_4yqGmc3LMF5cFDh3e&__tn__=-UC-R

I love my town.

Chrisxx