More wood cutting

It was a wet and windy afternoon here yesterday, with no reason to venture out we just watched Rugby on TV (I was wrong when I said yesterday we would be watching snooker on TV - that's next week  and tennis on the 15th) and read and  I got the Christmas list book out to see how many spaces could be filled in - several ideas still needed, although I've worked out exactly what's going in the hampers for sisters and brothers-in law. I'd like to say what will be included but that will spoil the surprise because my sister might read this. I'll have to take a photo and put it on the blog after Christmas.

Although this is what you see on our sale ad  I'm assuming we will here for Christmas, although the couple we are selling to want to be in by spring for planting, they are in a rented house in Suffolk with a flat in London which is almost sold so it will take a few weeks to sort out. I also need to find out who (family) is where over the holidays. So far we know our eldest is away at the in-laws in Devon and Col's Dad will probably be too poorly to travel over here from Mid Suffolk.

This morning - Sunday -we've been cutting more wood, it's good to have large amount cut as we get through a lot on the woodburner and Rayburn.

This is where I sit to chop kindling wood, I like to keep a few bags ready to bring in.

Clearing the big poly-tunnel is now finished, it's all ready for whatever the new owners want to grow

The middle polytunnel has carrots almost ready, swedes that might grow given time, beetroot at the back right. Lettuce that we are eating leaves from in the foreground, radish and rocket in the middle and at the back are small plants from a £1 living salad tray from Lidl. There were more than a dozen plants Col was able to divide and plant out. On the left the pepper plants are still hanging on with a few peppers still to be picked as we haven't had a frost yet.

The 8th money saving tip from the 2013 list  was swap an expensive hobby for a cheap one.
 Someone Col used to work with had a boat for a while and said it was like pouring money into a hole in the sea. I guess any hobby is as cheap or as expensive as you can afford it to be. Reading is cheap if you borrow library books but expensive if you want to buy everything in hardback and brand new.

Thanks for comments yesterday, it is a little cooler today- thankfully.

Back Tomorrow
Sue



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Keeping the home fires burning and a walk on the beach

As it's looking unlikely that we will move before winter Col decided to ring the skip hire place on Friday and ask them for a load of scrap wood. One load or two they asked? We get it for free as they are glad to get rid of it.The first load which arrived just 15 minutes later wasn't very big

and we soon got it shifted into the shed. The second load was bigger and was delivered just minutes before we had 5 hours of heavy rain. So we left it out until late Saturday to dry off a bit before piling it up in the shed out of the weather.

Some of the wood is quite small and a bit rubbishy (old trellis) but one of the rules of  heating your home with free wood is Never say No!

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Aldeburgh beach was almost empty when we went down for a walk  on Saturday morning, the first picture is the view North with the dome of Sizewell B Power Station, 4 miles up the coast, on the left. The grey buildings are Sizewell A which is no longer in use and is being decommissioned. The village is Thorpeness which is just a mile and a bit from Aldeburgh,  from here that you can see how far Thorpeness Point reaches out into the North Sea because Sizewell looks as if it is miles inland.

The Power Station is where the n of Leiston is on the map

 and then looking South to the Martello tower in the distance. This belongs to the Landmark Trust and you can rent it for a holiday home

 

Is this a giant rock with a hole through laying on the beach or a small hag stone right up against the camera lens...............
 My thumb in the corner gives the game away!

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What does a good Dad do when he gets an urgent call from our youngest daughter to say their arrangements for getting to Stansted airport had fallen through and please could he pick them up at 2am to take them down to Essex catch their plane. Of course he said yes.
 So a bit of a disturbed night was had by both of us. I hope they have a good holiday!

Back when I've recovered  from lack of sleep
Sue

On my walk I saw............

 My new boots have had a small try out, just 10 minutes up the road and back, I'm starting gently!

 On my way I saw about 2 dozen young pheasants. They were on the field and on the road and C said later they were all over our field. The people who organise the shoot in the local woods must have just released them.

  I saw that the farmer hasn't reinstated the footpath across a field like they are supposed to do after cultivating.

 I saw a long bit of fallen branch so I dragged it  home and added it to the wood heap.

And then I saw this, which means the hole in the road outside our house is going to be repaired at last. It's quite deep and everything has been going lump, lump through it for weeks.

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We were given another bag of cooking apples today so I decided to turn some into a couple of pies straight away, I also mixed up some crumble topping to store in the freezer and tackled the kitchen windows, they had got so bad it was embarrassing. 

C was working at our neighbours this morning, clearing out her poly-tunnel and cutting back her summer raspberries but before then he had already been down the road and moved the irrigation stuff. The job will probably come to an end soon as the carrots are almost ready to be lifted.

This afternoon he started to cut up the dead elms that he cut down a few weeks ago, they can go straight into the wood shed. I need to start cutting kindling wood again soon, there are only 2 sacks in the shed and once we start lighting both the Rayburn and the wood-burner everyday we will soon use them up.

Thank you for all the comments about the expensive walking boots and cheap meals out. We shall be eating at home for the foreseeable future! Our youngest and her bloke came round for dinner tonight so we tried the first of the "proper" lamb joints  from the half lamb pack bought earlier this month.
With roast potatoes, parsnip, runner beans and carrots- all home grown. That's what you call a real meal!

Back Tommorow
Sue

A tree fella

Sometimes C knows what jobs he's going to do when he gets up and sometimes, like today, he just suddenly decides on something completely different.
 So when I got back from a quick trip to Leiston he was just about to take the tractor onto the stubble field to pull down a few dead elms from our hedge boundary. He said it would be much easier to pull them onto the empty field rather than onto our land.  Fields are only left as stubble for a couple of days unlike years ago when they were left bare all winter. So he decided to get it done before they turned up to start cultivating and sowing.

 He then took the trailer round onto the field and loaded the trees with the tractor. They've been put up near our bonfire heap so that when we cut the trunks all the small twiggy bits can go straight onto the fire.
More free wood for winter and as it's dead we can use it straight away.

 We had thunder, lightening and pouring rain this afternoon, luckily I had got the washing in just after lunch and it was nice and dry. The rain has filled up all the water butts and given the runner beans a good watering. I thought it might have knocked some flowers off but they look OK. People keep asking us when we will have more runner beans for sale but they are really slow this year.

Everyone who said I would enjoy Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield were right. It is very funny despite the life of an upper middle class woman in the1930s being a whole world away from a simple Suffolk smallholder in 2014. A good fat book too, I think it will be added to my wish list as a book to keep.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

More free winter warmth

The lorry from the skip-hire place turned up with another load of scrap wood, we weren't expecting anymore and didn't really need anymore, but when you heat your house with wood you NEVER turn free wood away.
C was in the middle of sorting out the baler so it was me who had to shift it into the shed out of the way.

No worries about being cold this winter!

With the help of a hoe to pull the branches down, we've picked off the rest of the apricots and put them in the freezer. I gave up on trying to squash everything into one deep freeze and have put the second one on. There will be pears and plums to go in a month or two and I want to go to the cheap butchery place for some chicken wings and thigh joints ASAP.

This afternoon it was more irrigation equipment moving for C and he's taken the baler back because we are not doing the barley straw for a few weeks and we've not got room under cover for it here.

I've just realised that Friday is the 1st August, where on earth has July gone?

Back Tomorrow
Sue

New shed Stage 2 + log splitting.

We got off to an early start and had the concreting finished and everything tidied up, cleaned and put away by 11.30. The ballast was on the trailer so it was easier for C to shovel downwards into the mixer. I did the wheel-barrowing and tipping out and he did the mixing and leveling.

We've put a plastic fence around so as to avoid small cat paw prints which were always a feature of any concreting done years ago.
Then it was in for showers and changing out of cement splattered clothes before lunch

After lunch  C was outside and came in asking did I know the wood splitter had appeared? We asked our farmer friend if we could borrow it about 4 months ago but it was being used on another farm. Then suddenly this afternoon there it was standing in the hayshed.
Of course as it was a chance to play with a bit of machinery, C was out there in 2 seconds flat! We have a couple of piles of wood to split, some already seasoned and some cut down after the gales in December.
I lagged behind a bit as I was still sorting and boxing the eggs,  then took the camera up for an 'action' photo.

Difficult to capture any action with an hydraulic log splitter!

 A few minutes after taking this a pipe blew off showering engine oil all over the tractor cab. Whoops. It was soon fixed although clearing the oil up will take a while longer. I thought I had better help so there we were, me lifting the logs onto the splitter, him operating the handle, some of the logs into a builders bag and some into the wheelbarrow for me to take them to the shed.
We got one pile sorted and then I rebelled as I wanted to watch Andy Murray at the French Open.

Thank you for comments yesterday about which of my draft blogs I should finish first, now I'm worried because I don't think any of them will be as interesting as you think! No time to finish them for a while either.

Nearly 3lb of strawberries picked today. Yummy yum yum.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

3 days of Sunshine in Suffolk

It is such a rare thing this year - 3 days of sunshine and blue skies. Lucky us.

I nipped into Saxmundham for the February main shop at Tescos this morning. Must remember not to go again first thing on a Monday morning - half the shelves empty and six things I couldn't get. I thought I would investigate Waitrose for the missing value range SR Flour - that place is a joke. Their Essential range flour 3 times the price of Tesco. Their Essential range weetabix more expensive than proper Weetabix in Tesco. Our stupid  Tesco do not stock value range bran flakes or weetabix, yet they do have value range Gin and Vodka! What does this say about the folk of Saxmundham I wonder.
I had a £2 off £10 spend at the Co-op pharmacy - 2 things I wanted they don't have.
I gave up and came home!
Small Rant over. ( please don't reply to this small rant. I know the workers own the place therefore their working conditions are better and I know a lot of people love the store for their own reasons, I'm just astonished at their prices.)

Him Outside was working at our neighbours this morning. He is beginning the job of erecting a small poly-tunnel to cover her small boat. Having sold her holiday flat in Majorca she is planning to get sailing again on the local rivers and estuarys, so wants to keep the boat out of the weather.
 He has also been moving more wood from the outdoor heap where it's been seasoning for a couple of years into the shed for cutting. Free heat but lots of work. Look at that blue sky! ( Apologies to anyone reading this where it isn't sunny today!)

My afternoon jobs were the egg sorting - of course- and then boring ironing, a tasty lamb stew for dinner using some Co-op Yellow sticker neck of lamb chops - one of the best cuts for stew  I think. Once cheap, now even they are too expensive unless I can find them reduced.

It was lovely to watch Andy Murray winning in The Davis Cup on TV last night. I thought it was odd that I was " allowed" to watch as Him Outside missed the first of the new Top Gear series, should have known it was repeated tonight! I can't STAND that Jeremy Clarkson man- Just awful! Some people seem to find him funny - How weird.

And finally I must say Hello and welcome to another follower in the pictures, number 135- L.J. Lilley. Plus also welcome to Jennie on Bloglovin number 97.

Back tomorrow

The mystery of the vanishing blog

I did a post about the weather today - St Paul's day and an old rhyme about the predictions for the future depending on today.
But it vanished
1 person commented
45 people viewed it
Then Puff off it went into cyberspace,
It also had a bit about woodcutting
More logs for our fire
Then it vanished
All that is left unless I write it all over again is this picture

Him Outside cutting the dead larch from our neighbours into logs ready for splitting.

So where did it go?
and How?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind!

Back tomorrow............or Monday

Monday jobs with Sunday photos

 It might be cheap to have wood for heating but it is time consuming. So while it was fine yesterday we did lots of wood moving. We have a HUGE heap of long large logs seasoning up against the fence, of course this winters weather means that they are very wet so some have  been moved under shelter to dry out ready for cutting, but before we could shift them we had to make a space by moving a builders bag full of logs from one shed to another.
Then we decided that it would be a good idea to cut down a couple of the dead elms that are in our boundary hedge as they are ready for burning almost straight away. Dutch Elm disease wiped out all the big Elms back in the 70s but from their bases small elms grow for maybe 10 years before also succumbing to the disease.The twiggy bits snapped easily to make a good big box of kindling wood. Finally Him Outside cut some old pallets to make small stuff for mixing in with  the larger logs. We are waiting to borrow a log splitter as we have a lovely  heap of big logs nice and dry ready for splitting. A year ago Him Outside wouldn't have thought twice about doing it with an axe, but after the heart thing it seems wiser to make life as easy as possible. That's why we are so glad that we bought the small trailer for the mower - it's a great help.

Why is this blurred? Because I realised that if I didn't shift backwards PDQ it was going to land on my head!

Wood to keep us warm for several days and there are still some dead elms to come down another day.

So onto today, which according to the radio is Blue Monday. This is the day when half the population suddenly realise that they spent too much at Christmas, they have several days to wait until payday and their credit card bill has arrived.
Was it Blue Monday here? No off course not! Monday is bread making day. I'm making 1 round loaf in a cake tin at the moment as the other week a lot of the black  non stick on one of my  good deep bread tins all came off on the bottom of the bread. Although I've looked everywhere locally and in the Lakeland Catalogue I can't find another one as deep, plenty of shallow ones but they will make such a small slice of bread.I shall have to resort to ebay.

Him Outside was away early to work for the County Council and apart from bread making I tackled some routine housework.
Lunch was some delicious celery soup made from a few outside bits of a celery head. Cheap and Easy.
Dinner is a vegetable curry using part of a butternut squash, two leeks, an apple and some pepper from the freezer, with a large dollop of courgette chutney. In other words completely home made except for the curry powder and the rice to go with it. Cheap and Easy again!

I forgot to watch Call the Midwife last night as we had the snooker final on and I was deep into a library book -- One Woman's War by Eileen Younghusband. She was a clever young woman who joined the special services part of the WAAF and trained  to work with the new RADAR. She had to sign the official secrets act  so wasn't allowed to talk about her job until the 1970s.

Welcome to new followers - Catt on bloglovin and Bovey Belle in the little pictures on the right.
Hope you enjoy my tales of a quiet life in Suffolk.

Back Tomorrow

Picture of Christmas

This morning we did a bit of wood cutting, he wields the chainsaw and I do the positioning of wood onto sawing horse and the wheelbarrowing the cut bits to the wood heap. At the moment we are using a lot of dead elms that he cleared from a friends farm last year and some leylandii from one of the trees cut down here a couple of years ago- using free wood for our heating is our biggest frugal money saver.
Late morning I hopped on my bike and cycled down to Friston to visit their mini Christmas Fair, its a really small village with an aging population and lots of second homes and  the Christmas Fair has got smaller each year since we moved here. I spent 50p on something that will go into the Christmas cupboard for next year!
A few more presents have been wrapped and things ticked off the list.
Here is another picture of Christmas given to me by M and R when they arrived yesterday. Hope I can keep it alive a bit longer than the last one I had. I'm not very good with indoor plants.

It was all OK until 8.30 am, then.................

I went out to let the chickens out just after 7.30 and there was no sign of any damage, the electric fences were still upright around the chicken runs, trees all looked fine. All was OK. Then at about 8.30  the sound of the wind went up several decibels, the front fence blew down, two  branches from  oak trees over the road came down, one of them bringing with it our neighbours phone wire and practically all the leaves came off our horse chestnut tree- all at once!

Then just as quickly the wind died down and we were back to a normal windy October day. Weird.

Quick as a wink Him Outside was out with the jeep and a chain to pull the branches off the road and into our driveway, then the chainsaw was soon out and the wood was ready to go into a builders bag to store away for a couple of years to season.

 So we got away lightly. I think it will take a lot longer for our neighbour to get her phone line back. As for our fence, the posts have broken so new holes will need digging and that will be way down the job list.
I'm glad we were not traveling anywhere today as there were lots of trees down on several roads around us.
I hope everyone in blogland is  safe and sound with not too much damage done.

Just a simple Sunday

I hate the day we put the clocks back. It means winter is on the way and I'm not good in the winter. I shall have yet another fight with nasty black depression that sometimes sees me falling into a black hole. It's a lack of a chemical in the brain that does it, easily controlled by a small dose of happy pills but annoying all the same.

Once the rain stopped Him Outside brought in a bookcase that was in the old campsite toilet block. It was painted purple  but he has painted it white and it is now beside the bed with a kettle on it - so I can reach out and switch it on - Luxury!

Next job was to shift some logs that Bts - the tree cutting people, had left behind when they cleared under the pylons. It's not our land but nobody really knows who owns it. We know who farms it but the land was sold off several years ago to some big insurance company or something similar. So we've claimed the logs which have been added to the huge heap that we already have seasoning ready for a few years time.

Other than those jobs and the normal egg collecting etc, we've had a quiet restful day.

We have heeded all the warnings, put things safely inside sheds and generally prepared for whatever weather comes our way tonight and tomorrow. The last I heard the storm had been down graded to a once in 5 year event rather than a once in 200 year storm like we had in 1987. I was 8 months pregnant back then and our electric was off for a week. Because we saw no TV for a week we had no idea what effect the wind had in other parts of the country. Our son remembers unwrapping presents by candlelight on his 6th birthday.
Which reminds me - he didn't get the job that he was interviewed for last week. I'm sure things happen for a reason and as the job was a 3 year contract with one year in Norfolk, one year in Suffolk and another year in Hertfordshire it would have been difficult to know whether to move 3 times or travel which would have made life complicated for them both. I'm sure something will happen that will enable them to move back to this area at sometime - just not yet.

Thank you for comments yesterday, it's lovely to hear from people all around the world who have connections with Suffolk. Also welcome to new followers on here and via Bloglovin'.

Yet another chicken shed

Selling eggs at the gate is one of our main income sources. We live on an unclassified backroad but it is used by people from several villages who are heading to Saxmundham and as we've sold eggs on and off for 20 years we knew that when Him Outside went self employed we would increase hen numbers.
The trouble is that in the fixed shed the chickens soon turn the grass to mud which is not good for clean eggs. So plan " turn old campsite loo block into chicken shed" was hatched (!).  Everything was stripped out, cleaned out and tidied up. Him Outside sorted perches and nest boxes, our farmer friend came with his loader and big trailer

 and just a few minutes later the old shed had been shifted right up to the top of the field and as soon as we get more electric fence we will move the chickens.
They will love  to have more grass, the fixed shed and run will have a rest and the eggs will be cleaner.

This is where I was while it was raining first thing this morning, at my "work station" chopping kindling ready for lighting the Rayburn and woodburner. It is something I will be doing regularly from now until April.  It keeps me out of mischief .

 I wonder if we really will get the weather that is forecast for Sunday or Monday. It sounds as if it will pretty rough, but sometimes when the weather is from the South West by the time it gets to us on the Eastern  edge it has worn itself out.

Thanks to everyone for Pasty and Autochopper comments yesterday!
Back tomorrow.

A wet Friday

Thank you to Dc at Frugal in Norfolk, Pam at winkle#39;s Crazy Ideas, Morgan at Growing in the Fens and Cro for comments yesterday. It seems I'm not the only wife who gets landed with all the Christmas organisation and I'm also not the only person who doesn't really need anything for presents anymore.

We had more wild and windy weather over night and again today and we honestly couldn't remember when we last had rain two days running. More cooking apples and peppers have been put into the freezer and the ironing has been done while Him Outside has done a bit of tidying of the workshop.Those last few words ought to be in capital letters as it doesn't happen very often!
He also took the trailer to town and came back with 6 empty IBC 1000lt containers. These will be pressure washed, advertised in the smallholders newsletter and hopefully sold for a good profit. They are ideal for catching large amounts of water from a shed or house roof.
 This afternoon he did a bit of firewood cutting while I lit the woodburner and did some stitching.

First I cut several inches off the sleeves of a Cotton Traders roll neck cotton top. I love these for winter warmth and snap them up from charity shops whenever I see one. Ones for men are best as they are longer. The one I found in the Sue Ryder Shop in town the other day was £3.95 and lavender coloured but the arms were made for a gorilla! It's a bit too big all over really, which is fine except for the sleeves.

It seems there are so many worrying things in the news just lately. Energy companies are putting up their prices and then there is the threat of  blackouts if we have extra cold weather. I heard that in Liverpool the food banks are having to give out food that doesn't need heating as so many people cannot afford to use a cooker.How are so many people slipping through the safety net? As for all the goings on in the US government.....well who knows what effect that will have on the world if they can't sort themselves out.

Then I read that Ilona, the Queen of mean at Life After Money was fed up with reading about money saving, frugal living, debts etc etc and thought " goodness me what is the world coming too".

Seriously though it does look as if more belt tightening may be needed for many people. I sometimes feel overwhelmed by hearing of so much poverty in this country without even thinking about the rest of the world where poor really means having nothing.

Cheap Heat and remembering childrens books.

Thank you to everyone for comments yesterday. I did reply to all but some of the replies have vanished into thin air - very odd. They were there and then they weren't!

Mostly we burn wood for heat. Our woodburner in the living room only needs a few bits to soon warm us up. The Rayburn in the kitchen also uses wood and anything else you like really. We get through a lot of wood every year and it's mainly free, except for buying a new chain for the chainsaw or a new chainsaw every now and again. We've got hedges and trees all around the field which we thin out and we can pick up old pallets for free from a couple of places locally.
BUT the problem with wood is that unless you are lucky to have some nice big bits of oak, you can't keep either the wood burner or the Rayburn in overnight. Which means by morning the house is cold - sometimes VERY cold. When I was younger this didn't matter but I certainly feel the cold more now I'm heading towards 60 and we started to get a few bags of coal in each winter to keep the Rayburn in on very cold nights.
Years ago every town had a coal merchant and we were able to get loose cheap coal or similar locally. When the last man retired we just bought a few bags where ever we could. Then a few months ago when our friend P brought the 9 chickens and a load of wheat over for us as he was giving up hen keeping he said he had several coal bunkers full off coal and Homefire ovals which he had got in return for work done, and as he would be moving soon he said we could buy it cheap if we went and collected.
So off we went early this morning with a big bundle of 50 paper feed sacks, 2 wheelbarrows and a shovel and our old horse box trailer.We came home a few hours later with enough coal for about 10 years! all for £200. Bargain.

This afternoon we picked the rest of the pears off the tree before the windy weather hits us tomorrow. I think I will be spending the day putting them and more apples into the freezer. We came to the conclusion that we had to turn on the second chest freezer if we wanted to keep all of this years bumper apple and pear harvest. Once we had 3 chest freezers, back in the day when we bred sheep we would have up to 8 lambs in half lamb packs in the freezer waiting to be sold. The second  chest freezer hadn't been used for a year but luckily after a bit of juddering it got going and seems OK.

Morgan at Growing in the Fens did an interesting post about reading and as she put a link into to my library book picture, I thought I would put a link in to her blog!
People often say that children need to have lots of books at home to get into reading but I love books and reading and yet we had very few books at home. My Aunties would get me a book for Christmas or birthday and we had one every year at the Sunday School Anniversary as an attendance prize.There were some Enid Blyton books around but I don't remember my mum or step dad ever reading a  proper book, although Mum read magazines and Mills and Boon type books when our neighbour lent them to her. She certainly never ever took us to a library. It must have been primary school that got me interested in books, I remember  Swallows and Amazons and of course all the Narnia series being read to us and  sometimes when the Schools Mobile Library came round we would be allowed on to choose some. The series by Will Scott about two families and their holiday adventures were my favourites and  several years ago  I found a copy of one in a charity book sale. I was so excited to find it and remember those stories. One year, on a visit to Hay on Wye we went to the Childrens book shop as our son was into collecting Biggles books and there I found another book that I had loved as a child. So had to buy it to relive those memories again. Just seeing them sitting on my bookshelves makes me smile.

GOOD HEAVENS ABOVE - I just looked on Amazon to see if there are any other Cherrys books and one like mine is £180!!!! I'd better put it under lock and key!

A picture of Autumn.

This photo sums up the Autumn on the Simple Suffolk Smallholding

Two log baskets full of wood= free heat from the wood burner for a chilly evening and hot water and a hot kettle from the Rayburn.
Lots of squash to sell and lots still on the field.
A trug full of eating apples just ready and picked before they fall off.
A colander full of pears to put into the freezer.
A trug and bucket full of cooking apples to sell.
A big flowerpot full of windfall cooking apples to put in the freezer.

No wonder we are smiling!

Thank you to everyone for interesting comments yesterday.

Attila - could you hide the pears from your DH? :-)  I think they are nasty when hard too, so usually poach them before eating at this time of year.

Pam- Yep, I'll let you know which of the crime books I enjoy.

Bridget- We've never tried just Niger seed for bird feeding, we did use a mixed wild bird seed but most ended up on the ground.

Dreamer- we loved Scotlands Book Town when we visited a few years ago. Missed the book festival by a week but found a book I had been looking for for a long time in one of the book shops.

Sadie- Have you heard about the Clifford Road School air raid shelter in Ipswich?Open for visits sometimes, I've never been but heard it is very good.

Cro - I thought people in France ATE the wild birds rather than feeding them!

Julie- Aren't we so lucky to have free book reservations in Suffolk. It's 55p in Norfolk, another reason never to cross that border!

Cochrane Girl- Thank you for the info about another interesting sounding WWII book. It wasn't in stock in Suffolk so I've suggested it on their website suggestion page.

Fran - My library book photo is a good way of filling a blog once a month! So will keep going.

Lynda- I didn't realise that shipping via Amazon to the states was more than shipping via Amazon  from the states to us here.   I smiled at the thought of you struggling through an airport loaded down with books.