celebrations & events

April 12, 2023

dear diary ~ holiday almost over

I am writing this in a few snatched moments of peace while daughter and granddaughters are out for a wee while. The quiet and calm is just what I need for an hour or two to recharge.

On Easter Sunday we had all the family for tea and the sun managed to come out for a while so the grandchildren could enjoy the Egg Hunt around the garden. Of course we had to make sure each of them found a similar amount of eggs so I hid some quite well so they were not so easily spotted.

The chicken casserole went down a treat and I got the thumbs up from my younger daughter who was chief taster during the cooking process – being vegetarian I never get to taste what I cook if it contains meat. Whilst dinner was cooking the children made me some lovely Easter name cards for the table using a sheet of stickers I found in our local post office and crayons.

They also helped with some of the decorations – I had bought some of those white chalk marker pens for glass and let the grandchildren loose drawing patterns on my windows – they thought it great fun….and yes it does wash off.

Little Freddie was far too excited to eat very much, being an only child (though not for long now) he likes nothing better than having Little L and Sweetie to play with him and didn’t really want to stop for tea. DH played hide and seek with them and at one point Sweetie came to say that they had searched the house and could not find grandad anywhere – which is surprising as our house is not that big and DH not that small!

Yesterday we took all the grandchildren and their mums out to Portland Basin Museum in Ashton-under-Lyne. They have a lovely old fashioned indoor street of shops, a doctors, schoolroom, pub and chapel complete with dummy people dressed in appropriate costumes. They can seem a little creepy at times as they are so life like a bit like the wax works.

How many people remember £, shillings and pence.

There is plenty to see and do for little ones including a craft session making paper bunnies and mice – the museum is completely free and the craft sessions only £1.30 a child – so very reasonable in price for a lot of entertainment.

We had to eat our packed lunches in the car though as it was bucketing down with rain just as we arrived. Luckily, the museum is mostly indoors with a picnic area outside by the canal and being the holidays they were running boat trips on the canal. There was a big queue for the boat but we decided against a trip in the rain – perhaps another day.

I was a bit worried that the boat might have been this old wreck by the notice….luckily not…it was an old barge and you sat inside out of the rain but seeing through the steamed up windows wasn’t easy according to the people getting off the boat.

Tonight’s tea will probably be pizza with sweetcorn – finding meal combinations that fit everyone’s likes and dislikes is not getting any easier – though surprisingly there is never a problem with puddings – they can be too hot, cold, crunchy, sweet, sour or full of bits but they still eat them with no complaints!

Today was our last day with the grandchildren and tomorrow, if I have any energy left, it will be all hands to the deck to try and get ready for Scotland. The weather here has turned Siberian cold with an overcast sky and outbreaks of rain all day so no washing was done because I couldn’t guarantee I would be able to get it out on the line to dry and there is no space inside at the moment. I was too tired to go into the garden too so there will be jobs to finish before we go if we can. It suddenly occurred to me that I won’t be able to sow any seeds until we get back from Scotland as there will be no-one around to water them and they will probably need doing almost daily in the greenhouse if I cannot open the ventilator – so it would be a big ask of my neighbour who generally steps in and does a little watering whilst we are away. Oh well I will just have to hope they germinate quickly when we get back.

Hope you all had a lovely Easter holiday xx

April 9, 2023

feasting ~ Easter Sunday

Happy Easter everyone – the church bells are ringing out in the village here to proclaim that the Lord is risen indeed. The sky is thick with cloud but no sign of rain and I am hoping the sun will shine through mid-morning as it did yesterday.

I should be in the kitchen doing the preparations for our Easter family feast tonight rather than typing on my blog but there is not a lot left to do. I have the Easter hunt to set up in the garden in readiness for Little L, Sweetie and Freddie this afternoon and the cake to assemble – I at least remembered to take it out of the freezer last night but I did forget I need to do some jelly – granny’s jelly is always a favourite especially if I do it in the old glass jelly mould. I keep thinking I will make a blancmange as the grandchildren have never seen or tasted one – old fashioned puddings these days like semolina, rice pudding and blancmange are never on the menu, not even at school. Many schools now just serve a yoghurt or something like flapjack as a pudding.

No matter how long I spend in the garden at the moment (and it has to be in short bursts of an hour) it is never enough during April when everything is bursting forth in the sunshine and the lighter days. Yesterday I pruned one of the Buddleias it must now be over 35 years old and showing its age – like me! But I will persevere with it otherwise it will leave a big hole and the removal of the giant cherry tree did that last year.

There is not a lot of colour in the garden yet – the tulips are still only in bud and the daffodils faded. There are a few primula dotted around and thank goodness for the strong blue of the grape hyacinth to cheer up the borders until everything gets going.

Well I think I had better get a move on I need to run around with the duster and vac again just to freshen up.

Have a lovely day x

April 7, 2023April 6, 2023

dear diary ~ Easter upon us already

Hello again, you can always guarantee that when I find my way back to write here I am between a busy period that has just ended and one that is about to begin! It is my lull before the storm.

I was still in Scotland in my last post and we will be venturing up there again soon – but Easter will be spent at home with the family (not sure even now who will be coming or when but there will no doubt be a house full on at least two days). I hope the weather is good or good enough for an Easter egg hunt in the garden with the grandchildren – I have got my Easter tree on display now and the whole house has been cleaned in readiness for our visitors. Sadly, I never found the time to make my own Easter cards and had to resort to buying a pack from Sainsbury’s.

Yesterday we had to go shopping – mainly to get in extra food and as expected the supermarket was busy. I would have preferred to have gone on Tuesday of this week but we made a flying visit up to see mum 90 miles away in North Yorkshire. It was not a good move as we haven’t done a trip there and back in one day since my back problem began almost a year ago now and I have discovered that it is too much of a journey to do in one day as my back pain was quite severe by the time we arrived home. To make matters worse when we got to the outskirts of our village there was an incident involving many police cars and the road was blocked by them so we had to drive a few miles round to get home by another route.

DH had his tooth removed and all seemed well for a day or two but then an infection took hold and he had to have antibiotics which always upset him and leave him with gut problems. This time we took no chances and I got him some pro-biotics to take at the same time. My sister also had a tooth out recently and she is on her 4th lot of antibiotics – talking to friends it seems quite common these days that antibiotics are required after an extraction.

We have had little Freddie quite a bit recently to give his mum a break. His new baby brother or sister is expected in May and due to less than perfect maternity care so far the pregnancy has not gone that well and I am so worried for this baby – on each visit to the many consultants and midwives (and there have been many) she leaves feeling more confused and upset as they each have opposing opinions and cannot agree on a course of action, leaving my daughter not knowing what is going to happen. In all this they seem to be ignoring the fact that she is short of iron which is leaving her breathless and tired. They can’t even retest at the moment as due to brexit there is a shortage of the chemical they use to do the ferritin tests.

The weather here has been so unpredictable, one day sunny and the next rain so it has been difficult to plan anything. On the wet days I have continued with a bit of re-organisation and decluttering and on the dry days I have been in the garden. I can only do short spells before my back starts to ache and at that point I don’t push it any further, so it is a slow job. We are just on the edge of the Pennines here over 700 feet above sea level and due to the extreme spells of cold weather we have lost quite a few plants this winter. I will have to deal with these one by one and think hard about what to replace them with that might be more hardy.

Today we have little Freddie again to entertain us and I am hoping he will help me make the nut roast for our dinner on Easter Sunday and maybe some chocolate cornflake nests to put the mini eggs in. I will probably just make sandwiches for Sunday teatime or maybe homemade soup – I already have a plain victoria sponge cake in the freezer for afters – I splashed out and bought a small pot of double cream and a pot of mixed berry compote for the filling. Of course there will be jelly and ice-cream for the little ones with chocolate sprinkles – just in case they haven’t had enough chocolate by then!

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter weekend and some much needed warm and sunny weather. x

January 31, 2023

dear diary ~ here at last

You will guess where I am with the photo – for new readers that is our little cottage in Scotland.

I thought we would never get here – breaking our journey in Carlisle overnight is good for my back but it sure lengthens out the journey and although the Premier Inn is cheap and comfortable there is no place like home with all your home comforts around you rather than packed in a bag in the boot of the car.

We stopped off at Penrith on the way to Carlisle – a lovely little market town with no end of independent shops – luckily it was window shopping only as it was closing time. We ordered 2 personal pizzas in the nearby Dominoes take away for our tea and ate them in the car outside the posh George Hotel in the town centre.

I also managed a turn around the local Booths supermarket… another favourite haunt (we don’t have one at home) and I discovered they stock those little tins of Batchelors creamed mushrooms that I cannot find anymore in Sainsbury’s. I had thought they may have been discontinued…so I am ecstatic (and mum will be too as she loves them also) – I picked up four cans to keep us going and will give a couple to mum. We had one of ours for tea on Saturday night with a baked potato. I picked up a couple of boxes of mixed grain Sharpham’s flakes, a bag of brown basmatti rice and some wholewheat lasagne sheets – all of which Sainsbury’s have stopped selling.

On Saturday morning after the mammoth breakfast at Premier Inn (though we only have the Continental), we had a good run down from the border and on arrival at the cottage on Saturday gave a huge sigh of relief to find everything OK. Our caravan in the garden (that we are currently staying in) was still dry and no signs of damp. The only disaster if you can call it that was that 2 pillows that had zipped pillow protectors with a waterproof backing had not fared well and had little signs of a green mould appearing presumably because the pillow was unable to breathe. They have never been a problem before so I think maybe the weather here has been very wet and damp for a while. I quickly bagged them up and will take them to the launderette in town for a good wash if we get chance.

It is as usual very peaceful here in the winter and today the sea is silvery and calm with the sun catching the underneath of the clouds lighting them up across the sky – you cannot help but relax and enjoy the beauty. On the first morning (Sunday) we had a late start to the day and after a long slow breakfast I cleaned up the caravan while DH began cutting the grass – it grows all year round down here on the mull – albeit much slower in the winter – but it takes quite a while to get it all done when the grass is long as the cuttings bin fills up much too quickly.

I never got to do a post before we left home. As usual our busyness took over – we had Master Freddie’s 4^th Paw Patrol style birthday party to attend and my younger daughter came to stay with Little L and Sweetie, so there was a lot of bed changing and washing going on. Master Freddie and his guests had a great time – 2 hours at the soft play centre down the road and a birthday tea and games afterwards at his house.

DH and I prepared the food whilst the children went to the soft play. I do like a good old fashioned party with sandwiches, a cheese and pineapple hedgehog and jelly and ice cream with sprinkles of course. The kids ate much more than we thought and being careful to avoid all those nasty colourings they didn’t become too hyper.

The cake (courtesy of Sainsbury’s this year) was covered in blue fondant icing but we put a piece into each party bag for them to eat and become hyper at home!

This little fire engine was a gift from Little L and Sweetie – it is from Aldi and folds up into a book When opened out fully one side is a printed road – great to pay with little cars on and the other side is a printed fire engine that makes up into a box that you sit inside complete with steering wheel – how brilliant is that!

I had my friend’s birthday present to sort before we came away – we only exchange little presents and we both like to buy from shops who sell hand made goods that support other people in their livelihood, like Oxfam, so I chose a tiny hand woven basket from a local shop called Fair Trader and added a conditioning bar of Patchouli and Sandalwood wrapped in some pretty cotton fabric from my stash.

I had a session with the osteopath last week to work on my back and this time my neck – long sessions on the computer does not do anything for anyone’s posture and certainly not mine. I often find myself slumping over the keyboard and in turn this has tightened my neck muscles and is now affecting my hearing.

I have brought quite a few books with me in case of bad weather – (I am currently reading through these 3 Persephone books that were a surprise Christmas gift from yours truly) and my knitting which is going to be for the new baby in May and which has been on pause for over a week. It is plain and basic but as a beginner who knows very little it might still be a challenge!

I also packed my little notebook where I make lists and do my planning – I have a lot of planning to do in all areas of my life – finances, wellbeing, house maintenance and the big one – what to do with the cottage. At the moment we are like Team Love it and List it and cannot decide on the best course of action. You might think I would be on Team List it but no….I still want to love it.

Whilst we mull it over there is plenty to do in the garden – the snowdrops are in full bloom and the daffodils not far behind so it is a good time to get down to some serious pruning. Like these hydrangeas.