Sorry it has taken me so long to type this post and say a big thank you for all your lovely well wishes – reading them has been a much needed source of comfort at the moment. I cannot tell you much more, but tomorrow I see my GP, though I suspect she may not have my results yet so I am no further forward.
The last two months have been a bit of a blur with more than a dash of frustration thrown in. The wheels of the NHS are grinding slowly in our region with many instances of my receiving conflicting letters, messages and advice which do not help the situation – at some point I fear the disorganisation will come to a head which is a shame as the staff are obviously working hard but it seems a case of the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
I hope everyone is well and enjoying the holiday – it is quiet on our road and down in the village with most of our neighbours taking the opportunity to go away for the week. I spend my time doing what little I am able and find myself longing for the busyness of life that I once had (and probably constantly moaned about!) The phrase be careful what you wish for springs to mind as I remember only a couple of months back yearning for the quiet time we had during lockdown! Now it is here I am not so sure I meant quite so quiet – the difference in lockdown being that I was very able and productive.
Hopefully, I will be joining in again blogging and commenting, but until then take care everyone and have a great Jubilee. xx
Just thought I would pop by to say a quick hello. Life has been turbulent here – hence the lack of posts.
I apologise for anyone linking through for the Scraphappy Challenge and seeing nothing new – since my previous posts written from our cottage in Scotland in March I came home with lots of plans and raring to go only to be struck down with illness and I am unfortunately not well enough yet to carry on blogging. Hopefully, the results of both the CAT scan and MRI will reveal the problems and things might begin to look up.
I miss everyone so much and hope all is well with you.
We have been home only a few days and already we are in great demand. I agreed to have Master Freddie all day yesterday from 8am -5pm so it was a long day. I had planned to finish the unpacking and the final bits to put away, so that has been put on hold now and I ‘ll get it done over the weekend – well we won’t be venturing out anywhere in this weather.
We had a great day though they are so cute at this age (he is just 3) and it is amazing how much they learn, and how much they copy. We did some water play with doggie and duckie (two tiny nail brushes in the shape of a blue dog and a yellow duck) that he became attached to when we looked after him during the Covid lockdown. Everytime he comes to play he searches them out and I get a small washing up bowl and fill it with water and he will play for hours.
We had a bit of a ‘crafternoon’ after lunch. His mum had sent a packet of coloured tissue paper circles and his tiny plastic scissors so we showed him how to fold the circles up and cut shapes out of them to make flowers and a kind of paper doyley like making snowflakes. We all made some but then what to do with them? After a little thought I had the idea to attach a piece of fishing wire to each circle and hang them on a paper band as a mobile.
I thought it looked quite effective hanging in our window moving in the draught. He has taken it home to show mummy – I am sure she will be delighted.
Once he had gone we whipped all the toys away, made some tea then collapsed on the sofa.
I am now trying to get my head into gear and plan for next week. We have had a call to say our new dining table and chairs have arrived – my brother is having our old pine farmhouse table. I will miss it – it has history marks all over it but it has always been too big for our little dining area and now the kitchen area is a little bigger and the dining area a little smaller we decided we would get something that would allow us more room but would be extendable when required.
We have to give the warehouse 24 hours notice before we collect the new table and chairs. We are not even sure if everything will fit in the back of our estate car and might mean two journey’s to Birstall near Leeds, but we will save £140.00 delivery charges (the table and chairs would have been delivered separately from the warehouse at £70 each delivery as we ordered the table long before the chairs) and that is a big saving for us at the moment.
I also intend to get going on finishing a few craft projects and start thinking about Easter cards. I don’t send many but I do like to make my own. I have more tablemats to make and the patchwork quilt that I began 2 years ago might get a look in again – I found some more fabrics to add to the ones leftover from my daughter’s wedding bunting.
All in all I am hoping for a productive week and I might even be lucky with getting some washing out on the line.
Our last day here at Beach Cottage and another blustery one. DH was outside earlier sprinkling fish, blood and bone meal along what is left of our Rosa Rugosa hedge alongside the lane in the hope it might kick start it into action and regrow from the little stubby stems we were left with after the massacre.
Meanwhile I took cover in the caravan and made soup with all the remains of the vegetables…..
– ends of cabbage and celery, 2 leeks, 3 onions, 3 potatoes, half of this piece of courgette and half a small bag of frozen peas. It will be like a leek and potato soup with a few added greens and some parsley. I would have added a carrot and kept it in chunks for a bit of colour but DH put them all in the stew last night.
For lunch we had the remaining lentil stew from yesterday’s evening meal and as there wasn’t very much of it left over I chopped the remaining piece of courgette into chunks and cooked it quickly with a handful of cherry tomatoes and griddled a few slices of Halloumi cheese.
For our evening meal we had an easy meal of baked potatoes (done in the microwave), baked beans and grated cheese – all we had left to eat up. Some of the soup I made will be transferred into a flask tomorrow and the rest transported home in containers in the cool bag.
We went back into Stranraer after our lunch to get another gas cylinder, we like to keep two full ones in hand and as the next time we come up the tourist season will have begun the extra demand for gas could see it in short supply again like last year, so it seemed prudent to keep stocked up in advance.
On the way back to our cottage we had a detour and went back to Portpatrick to do a bit of car sketching as it was certainly too cold to sit outside. DH did another quick line drawing of the cottages and guest houses round on the South Crescent part of the bay, (the photos are taken through the windscreen so a bit blurry).
Whilst I drew attempted to draw the Harbour House and Smuggler’s Cove cottage across the bay on the North Crescent.
When we are back at home I intend to do a quick sketch of something everyday to get in more practise. I do think it must help to understand how a building is put together and why DH finds it so much easier to draw them. When I am drawing flowers I always like to look at how a leaf joins a stem or a petal is formed before I begin – with buildings I find they are a bit of a mystery.
It was a quick 30 minutes sketch and then the rain came back and splattered across the windscreen obstructing our view so after a flask of hot chocolate we headed back to the cottage.
I had bought my little friend, the robin, a leaving present – a half coconut filled with all kinds of robin delicacies and hung it on the bird house which is well away from any boundary line down by the cottage and sheltered by the fatsia – I hope it makes amends for him losing his little home in the hedge.
I will miss seeing the snowdrops when we go home; there seems to be more than when we arrived and are spreading quite nicely throughout the woodland walk. I hope I don’t miss seeing the daffodils though, they are just in tight buds at the moment, but given they have quite a long flowering period, they might still be in bloom when we come again.
It will be an anxious moment on our next visit, not only wondering what scenes of destruction are going to greet us, but finding out if any of the chopped down clematis that twined in and out of our trellis fence has survived the machete (he swears he used a hedge trimmer – but either way they were hacked rather than pruned) but to me he will always be Machete Man now.
As it is still winter I have to take a lot of the contents of the caravan home with us. Mainly things that can go damp; even though it is double glazed the condensation builds up so we leave plenty of ventilation for air movement – all the cupboard doors, drawers and bedroom doors are left open so air can circulate well and the seating pulled away from the walls. I place the pillows in the centre of the bed and leave the duvet over a clothes airer in the centre of the living room rather than on the bed. The car would be just too full to transport these up and down as it is already half full with a lot of expensive tools that we need to use when we are up here. We can’t leave them in the cottage in case of another flood and I am not happy at leaving them in the caravan in case it is broken in to.
I think we have more stormy weather ahead in both areas – here on the Mull of Galloway and back home in Yorkshire. Hopefully, we will be travelling before either area gets too bad.
Thank you for all the kind comments over the last couple of weeks and suggestions it really helps sometimes to be able to blog about bad times as well as good- you are such a caring community and as Lyssa (alias Whittering Sybil) would say… I feel hugged. x
where the journey takes me 2 