Suffolk on TV

Did anyone watch Micheal Port-a-loo, sorry Portillo on his latest train trip when he was passing through Suffolk. It was on Friday teatime and he visited The Long Shop Museum in Leiston  which we know well. Before that he hopped off the train at Stowmarket and went to Brockford to The Mid Suffolk Light Railway Museum and although we've not been there yet, in a few weeks time we'll be living  a couple of fields from this little bit of reconstructed railway and to look forward to they have a MIDDY IN THE WAR YEARS event every year.
Typically for a rural village, the railway museum  upset a lot of people round about. They first got permission for static railway displays, then managed to get some track laid so they could run up and down and are now applying for permission to extend the track. Mrs F who we are buying from, visibly Harumphed! when we mentioned the railway - obviously she was one of those against expansion! Apart from hearing the steam whistle across the fields it doesn't affect the house at all.
The Mid Suffolk Light railway was never finished, never successful and ran out of money and closed in 1952. When I was small -early 60's - one of the roads we traveled on in a village near Stowmarket still had a hump in the road  where the old railway had crossed the road and I can remember my Mum saying that children from the North Suffolk area would travel by this train to Stowmarket Grammar School in the pre-war years.

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Sue

Probably The Biggest Charity Booksale in East Anglia

The NSPCC book sale at Holmwood House School near Colchester every October is HUGE
When we used to sell second-hand books at Country Fairs it was one of the places we knew we could go  to pick up plenty of stock without spending too much.
 Now I go just to see whats there and perhaps find a few books.
Here's the queue to get in about 20 minutes before opening time, and it goes round the corner out of sight too.

35,000 books they  say they have for sale!
This picture is from t'internet from last year because I forgot to go up on the stage and take a picture and it's often much more crowded than this picture shows.

And this is the heap of the "few" books I found

When I got home I realised that the Woodsman by Ben Law was just a different looking version to one I read a while back so that will go to the charity shop as will The Behaviour of Moths - which isn't what I thought it was. The Agatha Christie at the top of the pile is a collection of short stories from her early writing that I hadn't come across before.
The most interesting of the lot is the one at the bottom 'Living Back-to-Back' a history of the very cheap housing built to house all the workers for the mills and factories in 19th century cities.

I searched all through the fiction for grey Persephones but not a single one nor any DE Stevenson or Angela Thirkell - sadly.
It was very difficult to limit myself to this lot as it's easy to go crazy and spend a small fortune!

Welcome to more new followers and Thank you for all the comments on the last post. I noticed that no one said if they thought putting knickers on while standing up was a sign of being fit and flexible!! Does that mean you can or you can't??!!

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Sue

A Hidden Church

This is one of the ways I kept myself busy this weekend.

If it hadn't had signs for the Flower Festival I would never have found this little church tucked away in the Suffolk countryside, not very far from Ipswich.

All Saints Crowfield, a church without a tower but with a timber framed chancel. A tiny church well over a mile from the village and up a track hidden behind big trees.

My reason for visiting? They had books and jigsaws for sale as well as the flower festival.

Amongst all the boxes of books I found lots that I'd already read or owned so only bought 3. Two Christmas stories for children and the "Year of Wonders" by Geraldine Brooks. No idea what it is but it's set in 1666, the year that the Great Plague reached the village of Eyam in Derbyshire. The villagers made the decision to put themselves in quarantine, so stopping the spread of the plague but resulting in the death of 260 people.

 The jigsaw of beach huts had to come home with me obviously!

 Then I had a cuppa and a piece of delicious chocolate cake and a quick look round the flowers inside.

Sorry no pics of the lovely arrangements - it was so crowded inside - because what their ad in the East Anglian  newspaper failed to say was that they were having a service at 10am after which all the people at the service had coffee in the church which they carried around looking at the flowers, making it difficult for anyone else to get around!

THIS is what I would have seen if it hadn't been full of people and flowers.

Home through darkening skies which looked as if we were going to get big storms but only produced a small shower.

Thank you for all your prayers and kind thoughts for Colin. I shall be popping to see him later, he was feeling a bit more "with it" on Saturday.......thank goodness.

Back in a trice
Sue

So that's what it was!

It is good when you see something and wonder about it and then find out on the news exactly what it was.

When I was taking our youngest home (or it might have been when I picked her up) on Tuesday, we saw this HUGE plane coming into land at what's left of the runways at the old RAF Woodbridge.
Then at the beach hut, there it was again circling low inland from Felixstowe, disappearing from sight and everyone saying "what on earth!"

Watching the Anglia ITV News on Wednesday I found out

An Airbus  and  Here too 

or maybe HERE
or there might be a video below

Depending which link actually works!

Great excitement for plane spotters

Mentioning our youngest reminds me that she has written her story of surviving cancer HERE. Colin has shared her story with several women coping with ovarian cancer that he's bumped into (not literally obviously!) while staying on the Oncology ward and he says it makes them smile. Seeing it all written down I realise how much I'd forgotten or wiped from memory. Our youngest had already moved out from home and it all seemed to happen quite quickly without her ever being really ill. She even moved flats during that time too which is a strange co-incidence with us and our house move in the middle of Col's treatment.


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Sue

V.E.Day Celebration at Parham Airfield

We had a rare trip out this afternoon to Parham Airfield WWII  Museum. It's only a few miles from us but I hadn't been before although Col went with our son when he was researching his Uni dissertation.

 It's just a small museum, run by volunteers and based around the original control tower, which we went to the top of - bit windy up there!

 There were a few extra things to see as they were having a VE Day celebration including some US WWII Vehicles

They have a reconstruction of a Barrack room,loads of photos, various bits of planes, A small museum about the resistance movement, A reconstruction of an SOE hideout and of course a tea room. As admittance was free we made a donation by buying a cuppa and a cake. The tea room was full of Friends Of The Museum dressed in WWII uniforms and ladies also in clothing of the period - Quite surreal!
The most poignant thing there, which brings tears to the eyes is the huge long list of names of airmen and ground personel who lost their lives while serving at Parham during the 3 years it was used as an airfield

Our son is now community archaeologist  with The 8th In The East, a Heritage Lottery Funded project to record and share information about  the USAAF bases in East Anglia during WWII. I have "borrowed" the information below from their website about a walk around what's left of the airfield at Parham. I'm sure they won't mind.


It was outstanding and a real privilege to welcome ninety people to our second heritage walk  at Parham Airfield on  Sunday 11th January 2015 .
The turn out for our first event of the New Year was simply remarkable and we’d like today a big thank you the team of volunteers at Parham Airfield Museum for welcoming us – and to all of you who came  along and joined us on a sunny, if windy, Sunday morning.
Put simply, the construction of these airfields were the single most significant landscape change to take place in their locations. At Parham alone, twenty-three miles of hedgerow made way for the construction of the site.
The walk mixed airfield history with landscape change and explored the ancient buildings found in the area, such as the early 16th century Moat Hall, once home to a soldier of Henry VIII following his marriage to a lady-in – waiting of Catherine of Aragon.
The 3-mile walk was led by our Community Archeologist Martin Cuthbert, with great support and able assistance from Peter Kindred and John from the the 8th USAAF airfield museum at Parham, home to the 390th Bomb Group during World War Two.
The attendees, young and old,  shared a really great mix of interests and motivations for getting involved. Some were interested in landscape history, others had travelled from far and wide to explore the military and  airfield archaeology, whilst others  still fancied the chance to have a walk in the unique landscape of their local World War Two airfield.
It was also really good to welcome along several members of the Friends of the Eighth, who contributed to our  understanding of the military history of the airfield.

The group prepare to set out from the Control Tower at Parham Airfield.

Martin, our Community Archeologist, shares details about the buildings.

At the administration buildings on Site 1.

An ablutions block on site number 5 at Parham

Sugar beet now stored on the perimeter track at Parham.

Modern day farming sits alongside the airfield heritage.

Nothing now remains of the 37 buildings that once made up site seven at the airfield.

Looking towards the remains of site 5 from site number seven.

At a hard standing on the perimeter track.

The walk was a great way for all to learn about the local landscape and to promote visitors to the museum, who remained  open all day for walkers to discover more about the servicemen whom lived and flew from the airfield.

Thanks to everyone for comments yesterday. There was an awful lot of collapsing in that post. I'm happy to say that I have been upright all day today!

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Sue

Last year, this year.

On this same Saturday last year I biked down to the village of Friston to visit their fundraising table top sale in the village hall. I only spent a few pence on a roll of multi-coloured ribbon for craft making- which I've not yet found a use for. On the way home my chain came off, which meant walking home and it started pouring with rain.

Today I biked down to Friston village hall and found these, 2 book ends , two hooks with a boat and lighthouse and a book called" Living Simply" which now I've looked at it seems to lean rather too much towards religion.

I've been looking out for bookends for ages so they are very useful, the hook will go in the bathroom which means the hook that's already there can be used in the new campsite loos. The book will be looked at and either shelved or put in the car boot box.
The weather was fine and so was my bike. Total spend was £2.50. Then I watched a whole afternoon of rugby! 

Back tomorrow

PS welcome to new followers on Bloglovin. Seems to have sneaked up to 111 there without me noticing

Potato Day

This is where we went this morning

This is the length of the proper British queue to get in at about 9.20, by the time they opened up at 9.30 the queue was even longer, so it's a very popular event.

We've been going to this for many years.They have about 80 varieties of potatoes to chose from and it was good value. But the price per tuber had gone from 12p last year up to 15p, ( which we didn't know until we got there) so we may not go again. Over the years we've tried all sorts of different spuds. This year our very early ones - 16 'Rocket' have gone straight into the bed in the poly-tunnel as soon as we got home. Last year we tried 'Swift' which were swift but tasteless. 28 'Duke of York', 28 'Foremost' and  our favourite 56 'Charlotte' are all on egg trays chitting.( which is a word even though blogger says it isn't!). These are all First and Second Early potatoes and will go into 4 beds in the garden. Most will be sold and as we dig fresh each morning they are very popular and sell quickly.
We now have to decide what to do about maincrop spuds which usually go out on the field. Last year we got a half a sack of  cheap seed spuds from a friend -  he didn't know what they were but they were very poor quality, as were some of our own saved from the year before- 'Cara'. Cold weather early then dry did them no good at all. It was obvious that they were not going to store well so we sold a lot fresh dug during the autumn.

There are other stalls at the potato day  too including the local District Council and every year they give away these very handy jute bags

We are not even in their council area but I now have 8 of these  in the cupboard, which is why I won't need to make or buy a bag for years.

Then it was time to head home for coffee, planting the Rocket spuds in the poly-tunnel  and then, while the sun was still shining, we both did some tidying outside. He attacked  some of the low branches on the apple trees and I went round the shrubs. The wind was strong and very cold and everywhere is so wet underfoot that it didn't make for pleasant working and we both decided we had had enough by midday.

Thank you to Helen, Bridget, The weaver of grass, Ilona , Morgan, The Squirrel Family and Jane for comments yesterday.

Right, now I'm off to read what everyone else has been up to today.

Back tomorrow. 

Saturday - going out and out again.

Nothing much planned for this morning so we decided to pop to the viewing  at the local Auction house to see what they've got for sale on Monday. It's about 10 miles away and we often think it would be good to go regularly, but of course we rarely get around to it. It's very difficult to look round, all the interesting "odds" are in boxes under the tables but if you bend down to look then no one can get down the narrow passage way between tables. I think  most of the stuff gets sold to folk doing car boot sales.It didn't see anything I wanted or needed.
We picked up a sack of potatoes on the way home as we've almost come to the end our own homegrown ones. 25kg for £6.40 - much cheaper than last year. Then stopped at Tesco for milk so I looked at the price of their value spuds - £1.18 for 2.5kg., almost double the price of buying by the sack.
This afternoon a rare trip out to a Jumble Sale in Aldeburgh. It was packed out, oh for the good old days when there was a jumble sale every Saturday afternoon! I spent the grand total of 50p.
The jug is for my shelves and the little perfume bottle will go to in the carboot box as  I'm sure it's worth more than 25p.

That was our Saturday, apart from Him Outside doing a few odd jobs outside and the regular chicken and egg work.
The bloke who owes us money for hay came round with £125 and a sob story ( he SAID he was going to settle up ......he's been owing us over £350 since September). I hate owing and being owed money.

A warm welcome to some new followers by bloglovin.

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.

30 Ways to Save £1-- Day 30 + 50p for Christmas decorations!

And Finally, The very last one of the 30 ways to save £1 was
30. Drive wisely - accelerate and brake slowly and don't carry more weight than you have to, take off the roof rack.
Him Outside even cleaned the jeep before we drove down to Essex on Tuesday so we were not carrying any extra mud!


I heard on the news that people were injured and fights broke out when Asda were selling reduced price televisions yesterday. Something to do with  being owned by Wal Mart so taking up the USA tradition of Black Friday when after Thanksgiving everyone in the States suddenly starts shopping for Christmas .
It must be hell living in a town or city in the run up to Christmas. It seems like whole world goes mad, car parks are jam packed, shops the same, queues everywhere. I NEVER go to Ipswich on a Saturday and if we do venture there during December it will be early as possible in the day and before the kids have finished school.
I'm so glad that we are out in the sticks but with access to two small towns where parking is free and simple and we can get most of our everyday needs.

This morning Him Outside concreted in the  6 new posts for our broken fence. He wanted to get this done so that when our son is here next weekend he'll be able to help lift the fence bits upright, while they are fixed back onto the posts.
I did the ironing and a bit of housework then biked down to the village hall to have a look at the Annual Cancer Research Christmas Sale. Plenty of people there and things to buy but I just had a go on the Grand Draw and spent 50p on a little Christmas Decoration that I've hung on the back door. ( The last of the Big Spenders!)

  I wonder if I'll get a phone call saying I've won a prize in the draw? It's unlikely as we are notoriously unlucky when it comes to winning.

The Christmas budget is looking good I still have over £100 left and only a Ham and fresh stuff to buy, so there will be some left for saving or carrying over to January (or to go on a secondhand book buying spree on Amazon!) The joy of having no debt and budgeting is that when things are under budget I know that we have a choice in what we do with the spare money. 

Buying and selling books on a sunny Saturday

We've had an in and out day today.

As you know I LOVE secondhand books and that was what today was all about.

 First we went cross country, through lovely Autumn sunshine and scenery to a small village in the wilds of high Suffolk. There are a whole group of villages collectively called "The Saints" and in St James they have an annual secondhand book sale in aid of the church. I don't know where they get all their books from but the village hall is always packed full of books and people.
I found a few but didn't spend a lot as they only charge 50p or £1.

 Many years ago when we had livestock on the holding I found I had collected 10 books on goat keeping. Now nobody needs that many goat books, so one year we booked a stand and took all our spare unwanted books to the Suffolk Smallholders Society annual show. This grew year by year so that we were spending lots of spare time hunting charity shops and sales for Countryside, Livestock and Smallholding books and taking them to several Country shows every year.
Once the SSS stopped having a show and books got harder to find we stopped buying and selling until all we have left were about 4 boxes of books which this year we took along to the SSS AGM to see if we could finally get rid of them all.
 We are honorary life members of the SSS as we were very involved with the Society in the early years so we try to go to the AGM when we can and there is free food- always a bonus!
We sold a few but came home with 4 boxes still full. I shall have to have sort out and pass them on to a charity shop or anyone I can think of who might like them because we really don't want to take them anywhere ever again.
After such a busy day which we have become un-used to recently, I think we need a rest.
Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow  to tell you we've done nothing all day!

What to do with a blog and more about the local Produce Show.

Here's what one man did with his blog- he turned it into a book. Actually I think a lot of people have done that already but this is the first one I have read. Him Outside came across the info for this and ordered it from the library. After he had read it he said I would probably like it though it was gruesome in parts. I've only just started it and haven't got to any gory bits yet.

Having been reminded of writing a poem about childhood for a Flower Show years ago, wondering why I hadn't entered anything recently and nudging myself into picking up a schedule for this years show, I now have to decide what to enter.

I'm not as keen as some people who spend hours cleaning and polishing their vegetables so I only enter things that can be just cut or picked. I don't do Flower Arranging so that section is out. There are several things in the Domestic section that I'm hopeless at making ( Plain Victoria Sandwich cake for instance) and in the Handicrafts section I don't do knitting, painting, drawing or photography. SO
What's left?
In the veg section I shall enter Chillies, Peppers, Courgettes and Tomatoes, maybe beans if they grow in time, perhaps a cucumber and then Aubergine in the Any Other Vegetable Not previously listed Class.
In the Domestic Section I could do Rich Fruit Cake,Sultana scones,Suffolk Rusks,Loaf of Brown Bread(Hand made) and Cheese scones. Plus the Summer fruits jam that I made the other day, Jar of Chutney and of course Six Eggs ( home produced). Although I have a feeling that several years ago there were mutterings that maybe I shouldn't enter eggs as we have rather more hens than most home hen keepers.
In the Handicrafts Section I could enter  Any Small Cross Stitch Article, A hand-made card for a baby, A small Christmas Decoration and a Short Poem About a Village. ( question- how short is a short poem?!)
Entry is 20p per class which goes to pay for the prizes;- First £1, Second 70p and Third 50p. There's BIG money involved!!
 It's all good fun although lots of people take it very seriously and as well as money there are cups and trophies to be won and held for the year. I once won the Whiting Shield for my tomatoes as they were The Best Entry In The Vegetable Section!
There are Childrens classes too and when our lot were little I would encourage ( nag) them to make things to enter which would keep them occupied for the first week of the school holidays.
So it's all very well talking the talk but now I shall have to get stitching and writing poetry!

News re Him Outsides heart problems;- today he had to go to the surgery to have a 24 hour Blood pressure monitor attached, which inflates every 30 minutes during the day and every hour at night. It is already showing some VERY weird readings. Not sure what that means- we shall see what they decide to do next.