Another day at the Office!

Well things have quietened down for the moment. We are both back at work, the sun is shining unseasonably warm and autumn is fast approaching.

Here are a few nice photos on a sunny day

I'm making Pot Pourri with my roses, bay and lavendar this year.

Rosebuds and Bay leaves drying on a tea towel

 
 Herbs hanging in the conservatory to dry: sage, curry plant, bay and lavender.

I should be writing, I'm not quite in the zone yet, perhaps another cup of coffee...
I've tweeted, I've blogged, I've e.mailed but apart from that the latest, best and darkest
Hilary is still handwritten in notebooks. Must get on.

 

Adventures in life and Elephants!

After last week you would have thought things would have got better. Well, yes, I suppose they have in some ways. I'm always asking the Universe for more time off with my husband, and this week I got it. Thanks to him jumping like a nanny goat over the towing rig of the caravan while putting it away and missing!  He's bruised, may have cracked a rib, a massive red raw hole in his shin, and bruising up his arms and his legs. (As this happened a week ago they are a lovely sunshine yellow and sea blue now.)

At the time I washed and bandaged him up and he refused to go to the doctor and went back to work for two days. By the third day he couldn't put his foot to the floor and the massive cut was seeping yellow goo. This time I insisted he go to the doctors and they put him back together again (just like Humpty dumpty) and gave him antibiotics.

This is it a LOT better - why the drawing pad you might ask - for white balance! Hubby is after all a camerman like myself! The picture below was just after the treatment and should have looked a lot worse.

Now the irony, I had a steriod injection at the beginning of the week and for the first time in a year I can walk without any pain - joke eh?  Good one Universe!  So I have been running about after dear hubby where he is normally running about for me.  Be careful what you wish for.  I should specify for future Cosmic Ordering that I'd like us both to be off and well at the same time.

What next you may ask?  Well at the weekend we will be hobbling round the Goodwood Revival meeting dressed as 1940s Mr and Mrs for our 14th Anniversary. Ivory apparently,
so we will be giving some money to preserve and save baby elephants that have been orphaned by Ivory hunters. We cannot run out of elephants on this planet!  We have just fostered Jotto and Makireti for our presents to each other!

Here's the link https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/ 

If would be nice if you could pass this on and give, but only if you can. Charity begins at home.

Catton Place Sealed Knot Event

Well, all Knots as we call them are different, and we kind of expected this one to be as well. Mainly because we were there to do admin stuff, go to meetings, catch up with the our Regiment, the Kings Guard, get problems sorted. We arrived to a packed camp site at lunchtime Friday before the Bank Holiday, got set up with help from Knotters in our regiment. It was a squeeze but we were in.

Not being able to get our cats into the cattery as it was fully booked, we left them on 48 hour feeders with biscuits and loads of water due to the predicted heat of the weekend.

We had a frustrating and fun time chasing people around to get stuff done, and eventually we had time to go to Traders, beer tent, friends and relative's tents, then we went to the SK AGM, the Leven's Company AGM, The King's Guard AGM, and on Sunday about 11.00 we set off home. The caravan was packed up ready to go, hitched to the car, the hitch tested as we always do on a Knot (uneven fields) and off we went, a bit reluctant to miss the big party that evening - but our animals come first.

We got about half a mile away from the campsite when we felt the car judder, and turned our heads to see our caravan cross the carriageway of the A513 and head dive into a hedge.   At that time there was no one around.

I went into must do something mode, and phoned my sister as she has a 4x4 and I thought with some Knotters to push we could get it out.  I looked at the time. They were all on the battlefield now! 

I called the Automobile Association accident line, our caravan had applied the brake on it's towbar and broken away from our car and careered into a hedge blocking the A513 to Catton Park and the National Arboretum.

After frustratingly pressing the Number 1 seven times we got to a call centre advisor, and after going through the necessary ID's I asked for help, she asked if we had AA insurance, I said yes, and the next thing I know is that I am talking to an insurance assessor asking me numerous questions, and when I said I am on pay as you go on my phone, he said he didn't have my number, but would ask the call centre to get back to me. I had almost run out of credit on my phone. But they still didn't send an AA Recovery Van.

In the meantime we suddenly had a queue of traffic in both directons as our caravan was halfway across the A513 which was very busy due to a dog show, horse trials, and a Sealed Knot event, all taking place within half a mile of where we broke down.  The AA Emergency Breakdown still did not respond, or call us back, and my husband and myself were left alone to try and manage the situation.

Luckily a gentleman called Eddie Hammond from the horse trials brought a tow rope to enable us to pull the caravan more in line with the direction of traffic, thus opening one lane of the road, and then stayed to direct traffic.
 

A group of  about 12 cyclists helped lift the side of the van that was embedded in a gulley, so that we could get chocks under the wheels, which meant that the caravan was no longer grounded and sat on it's frame.

A lady from the dog show Jacky Motts - pulled us out of the ditch  with her vehicle and got us back on the road.  What an Angel!

We called the AA after 12.03 to ask advice if it would get us back 50 miles to our van storage and all we got was a recorded message yet again. We drove to the caravan storage site in Warwicks. Very very slowly as we didn't have any advice on whether the tow bar would hold, we kept stopping in laybys to check if it was all right.

Luckily for us we met with some fantastic people who need not have helped us but DID.  

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU Really can't thank you enough!!

To all the Lovely People who literally got us out of the mud - thank you all.

Flint House

Went to see Flint House, the Grand Design winner 2015
Didn't look like this when I saw it yesterday it was almost buried in thistles going to seed, about hip height. 

It was supposed to have been a wild flower garden, but it had no flowers at all, however, it did have an electric fence around it that we were warned not to touch. 

The huge glass windows made the house interiors really over hot and stuffy, even though the back and front doors were open. Apparently the heating was on and couldn't be turned off.

It is a fantastic work of art. But it's not a place to live in my opinion. The flint tiles leading to the front door were coming up and were wobbly, just the place to turn an ankle!  We were warned about this as we went in.  Also about the slippy slate bridge without handrails over the moat around the house, and the uneven nature of the steps and level changes.

The house had sunken baths that looked impossible to get out of. The decoration of the house was quite random, coloured giant building blocks were mixed with antiques in the bedrooms, 2ft high tin soldiers stood in the upper walkway intersperced with knitted Thai
tiger heads.

The trendy chairs that looked like cotton reels outside were standing like plant pots at the edge of the patio. The kitchen would not work for someone who loves to cook like me. It had a flat screen tv a kettle and a toaster, and the obligatory bowl of colourful fruit to "dress" it.

I tried to walk to the annexe, but by this time I was feeling sick and getting dizzy again and the flint and grass railway tracks leading up the slope outside the house were difficult to negotiate, not able to step between the tracks, or walk on the flint, I decided with my dizziness, that coming back down would be an accident waiting to happen for me.

What is it there for? It was a present for one of the family - but they didn't want it. So now it
may house VIPs or visiting academics. It may be open to the public, it may not. It may be a weekend private retreat - it may not.  It can't be let as a holiday let. 

Along the North Norfolk coast, many houses wear flint dressings, here's a holiday cottage
 
and I bet they are a lot more user friendly.  They may not be full of expensive art but
they are near the beach, and I bet you won't break your neck negotiating your way to the
bathroom up and down steps in the middle of the night!

Horses for Courses naturally.   I do like modern buildings, not brutalist style, but buildings
that have a "wow" factor, that make you think, "I'd love to live here."  For me Flint House left me cold. How such an impractical piece of work won a design award is beyond me. The winding stairs to the bedrooms were tiny wooden and dangerous, as a piece of modern art I suppose it can sit and be admired amongst the overgrown thistles and electric fences.

And another thing!  One of the house guides actually apologised that some of the bedroom articles came from John Lewis!! Quel damage!!

Le Weekend

Hopefully it won't be too wet although torrential rain is predicted for Saturday, my friend and her hubby are coming over, originally for a barbecue - but it might have to be an inside one!

Still a bit dizzy, six weeks now, doctors are not worried - but then they're not the ones walking round in circles. Tablets not helping really.

But the weekend! One day to go!

Weekends go too quick, seems you just get to Friday night and suddenly it's Monday again.
How does that happen?

 A couple of weekends ago we were at Waddesdon, where I work, for Andy to look round the Kate Malone Exhibition.

 These are some of the plums I turned into jams and coulis last weekend

 This is how the garden looked for my last BBQ about 3 weekend ago!

Off again to the shops for some last bits and pieces.  

Last week I realised that my book The Women of the English Civil War was released 9th September last year, and since then every day, I have worked promoting it, as well as writing my Hilary Long Mysteries. It's now in the Commandery in Worcester - my first museum bookshop sale!  Hooray!

I just want to say folks, thanks for reading my blog, for me it's a way of practising my writing,
venting my feelings, right or wrong, and being out in the world again.  

Have a lovely weekend everybody.

Dizzy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCDPlU6ioZU

kinda sums up how my virus makes me feel - the chorus - nothing else.

Neighbours are sawing down my trees so I must go. Doesn't help my head.

Sick and Angry  today.
 

BBC's Versailles

Athough not historically accurate, Versailles is very pretty to look at. The clothes, the surroundings, the intrigue. The sex.

I love the shoes particularly, I like the men wearing them. I like that when they kiss do not leave beard burn on the ladies. I do like a shaved face, smooth, smelling of aftershave. I like the waistcoats, the shirts the cravats the jackets. Well everything really.  I like the men with flat stomachs and shapely legs. 

Just wondering if my new tablets are having an effect on me? 

Perhaps I'm just getting old, in my teens my boyfriends all had long hair, were slim, wore tight trousers, and either old regency jackets or old red guards jackets at parties. They smelt of Old Spice.  Later when I was slightly older, they were still slim, but looked Adam Ant-ish or Goth, and smelt of Brut. 

My hubby is determined to keep some hair somewhere so it's on his face in a 17thc goatee style. I can go with that - he wears Beckham aftershave - I buy it for him, left to himself it would probably be old mice.

 In his very best Musketeer Kit

He's a bit Poldark in this one

 

1940s dontcha know there's a war on?

The beauty of the beast - if only all men could look like this!