The week just gone

Apart from becoming Nanna Sue on the 27th, gazing at pictures of baby Jacob, stitching, sudoku-ing, baking  and watching as much tennis as the weather allowed, I did do a few other things while waiting for Col to come home after chemo number 6. (The really silly thing is that he probably didn't have any infection as nothing showed up in the blood culture. The high temperature was probably due to him having a heat pad round his neck because he felt so achy!) I finally picked him up yesterday afternoon.

So back to last Sunday when I zoomed out of Ipswich early to go to a car boot sale. It was Huge but mostly dealers or people wanting silly prices. All I found was a yellow ink refill for the printer, a big pot of parsley, a babies knife, fork & spoon set and a book about the ENSA organisation during WWII. Total spend £3.80 so apart from the exercise I got walking round, it was almost a waste of time.

I've walked to the shops and post office through this alleyway  passing under these colourful trees

I've been to Asda and seen these most frightening of garden ornaments

The worrying thing is that earlier in the year they had many more than this so some idiots people must have bought them. They even had queen shaped ones and now they have gnomes in swimming trunks!


I went to the library to return some books and  collect a few more. From the picture on last Monday's post two went back unfinished = Deadlier Than the Male was a study of women's crime writing looking specifically at 5 well know authors . It was a bit to literary for me and as it was first published in 1981 it's a

little dated so I just flicked through the chapters on Josephine Tey, Dorothy Sayers and Ngaio Marsh.  All of the reviews of The Girl from Station X by Elisa Segrave were good but after about 3 chapters I  couldn't be bothered to read on. The mother/daughter relationship was too uncomfortable. I probably should have persisted to find out what exactly her mother did at Bletchley Park during the war but............
Picked up were two diaries. First 'The view from the corner shop' by Kathleen Hey, the diary of a Yorkshire shop assistant in wartime and The Journal of Beatrix Potter - a massive tome of nearly 500 pages.


Then this morning it was the once a month boot sale near Woodbridge. Last month it was Huge, today the weather was foggy and nowhere near as many booters there. So after just  short  look round  I returned home with this small haul.

 Another Sudoku book for 30p, a cotton pillowcase to cut up for the inner sachets of the lavender cases for £1, 3 bird pegs for crafting -50p, yellow-duck hand puppet was 20p - he's brilliant! and all the 7 Josephine Tey books for £2. It's many years since I read some of them and the coincidence of reading about her in Deadlier than The Male and then spotting these books seemed too good to miss.

And here we are - a Saturday at the beginning of June. Although Col has to have blood tests and platelet infusions everyday this week, the weather is set to warm up so we might get to the beach hut  and there is a good tennis final on TV tomorrow - what else can a person ask for!

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Sue
PS welcome to Ana and Jan who have clicked the follower button.

A letter from the past and recent diary entries

A few weeks back I had a letter from my penfriend who lives on a windy Scottish island, in the letter she wondered how long we had been writing to each other (although I'm a bad penfriend who doesn't write as often as I ought!). I hadn't had a chance to sort through the drawer where I keep old letters to see if I could find out, when another letter arrived and with it W had included my very first letter written to her in May 2001 and typically it starts by me apologising for being slow to reply to her first letter! She said it would probably be sad to read as back then we had milking goats and we bred sheep, Col was still working for the County Council and our eldest was at uni, our son was taking a gap year between high school and uni and our youngest was just 13.

 It was a bit sad to read but also  interesting and I'm so glad she kept the letter. I know she will read this so Thank you W for that little window into what things were like and I will write to you with our new address very soon and I'll probably still be apologising for taking such an age to write!

Sunday, and  the bloke who had bought the old caravan chassis came to collect it at just the same moment that the man who's been storing a boat here for the last 3 years came to take it away. He owed us £40 so another little bit of money into the kitty.
We Think we have sorted phone connections/un-connections  and abandoning Talk Talk - if it works properly. Sunday seemed a good day to ring. The broad band connection speed is 10 times quicker in Ipswich  than here, which should make loading photos easier.

On Monday I zoomed to Woodbridge to take our signed contracts back to the solicitors, hopefully it shouldn't be too long now before exchange. My sister and brother in law came over to help Col burn some rubbish and load the horsebox trailer with all the stuff that we don't need at the bungalow. Then we took it to a friend who is storing it for us until we need it at a house with bigger garden or to sell it at the auction rooms one day.
That just leaves the things - for garden and workshop - that we will take to the bungalow, to be loaded onto the flat trailer.Then all that will be left in the shed are a few bits waiting for our youngest to collect and smallholding stuff left for the new owners.

Today, Tuesday and a bit more tidying, sorting and packing in the morning.  The most difficult thing to pack?..........a roll of Christmas wrapping paper!  - Too long for any boxes, I've been wondering where to put it for weeks, in the end gave up and chucked it into a cupboard in the caravan.
Found out today that the price of postage stamps is going up again at the end of March. I shall stock up because there will be lots of change of address cards to be posted out soon. Last March, pre last years price rise I bought £20 worth which lasted me right through to Christmas.
This afternoon another trek to hospital for Cols pre-chemo blood test and to see the consultant who decided to send him for an XRay  and then back tomorrow for a scan. Thought I would share the view from the 6th floor of the maternity block where the oncology and blood clinics are being held while they build a new specialist wing.

 Exciting view of part of the hospital car park, the Australia Estate ( so called because the roads are named after Australian cities) and  across Rushmere heath golf course with Foxhall Heath over on the right. The small white dot on the horizon is  BT telecommunications  research centre which looks like this when you get closer.



Welcome to Penny, a new follower in the Google pictures and thank you for lots of comments.

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Sue

Ipswich - here we come

Col phoned Friday evening to say I could pick him up Saturday morning as soon as the consultant had done his rounds. So off  to Ipswich again calling at an electrical place on the way to buy a cooker ready for delivering to the bungalow.
 For the first time in 30+ years I shall have to use an electric hob - I'm going to hate it! Although the heating in the bungalow is gas, the cooker that was there was electric. We don't want to go to the expense of having new gas connections and we've been advised not to have a gas cooker in a house that will be rented out (which is the plan for when Col is well again, plan A?). Therefore electric it must be and I'll just have to get used to it I guess. Cookers do seem to be more expensive than a few years ago and freestanding are more than built-in. We don't want to change the kitchen units at the bungalow as they are fairly new and in good condition. I wonder why the elderly lady who lived there had a new kitchen but not a built in oven?

Thank you to Sadie at a life in the English rain  ( another proper Suffolk gal only much younger than me!) for telling me that the library I shall be near in Ipswich has a craft group and other stuff going on - Great excitement. I shall be asking Sadie for all sorts of info about things going on in town because although most of Ipswich is as familiar to me as our little local towns, actually living there will be a whole new experience.

Photo from Mikesbus pages internet

 I've been going to Ipswich for shopping since I was a small child and can just remember these trolley buses which ran in the town centre until 1963. We would catch the 204 big red bus which ran every two hours all the way from Bury St Edmunds to Ipswich. If you look at my header and follow the road from Bury to Ipswich you will see the dotted line which was then the boundary between East and West Suffolk (until Local government reorganisation in 1973 when Suffolk became one county). We lived just into East Suffolk on the main road which was at that time the A45.
Each school holiday mum would take us on the bus to Ipswich and we'd have lunch in a small fish and chip  restaurant right near the bus station. It was always jam packed full because that was before coffee shops and restaurant popped up everywhere. My favourite shop was Cowells

!960s/70s buttermarket Ipswich found on google photos from EADT

because down in the basement was a fantastic toy shop with big trays of farm animals that you could buy one by one and loads of other pocket money toys. (It's strange to see cars in this road in this photo because the town centre is now all pedestrianised).

I'll be sharing lots more old and new photos of Ipswich over the coming months.

We've just spent a "happy" hour trying to contact BT and sort out phone lines for the bungalow. Still have to try and get through to Talk Talk - Oh what fun!

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Sue