Going back to childhood

I missed out on lots of children's books when I was young, I had a comic every week but we didn't go to the library and books only came into the house at Christmas, birthdays and Sunday school anniversary. The schools mobile library came to our primary school so we had plenty to read in school but we didn't take them home.
Luckily I got a job in a library when I was 16 and haven't stopped reading since.

When our children were young the library was one of the cheapest places to go in the school holidays and  there were plenty of jumble sales so always loads of books around. Our favourites for reading aloud were things that rhymed - like Hairy Maclary plus Topsy and Tim books, Jill Murphy and then Shirley Hughes was producing her lovely books but we still didn't get around to Beatrix Potter, Little Grey Rabbit and The Brambley Hedge Books

I'm putting it right now and have collected all Beatrix Potter from car boot sales over the last few years. I read all the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House books a few years ago and today spotted this in the charity shop for £1.50.

 Like Beatrix Potter it's the paintings that really make the book.....so detailed.

I've just finished one of Alison Uttley's biographies about her childhood - Ambush of Young days, I have another on order for next library visit and one of her children's books - Hare Joins the Home Guard  sounds intriguing so I've added it to my wish list.

*     *     *     *     *

Here's a thought........ Have you seen all the on-line Bingo ads on TV? They all claim to have "More Players than any other Bingo site", Tell me if I'm wrong but surely you would have more chance of winning if there were less players??

Back Soon
Sue

30 Ways to Save £1 -- Day 15 + More about apples

Is it just me? After seeing the trails and remembering the books that I read to our youngest many years ago, I want to watch Katie Morag on CBBC! Am I too old?


DAY 15 of the 30 ways to save £1 was
15.If you have an answerphone set it to the longest number of rings so that you can get there in time to answer and don't have to ring them back.
We have an answer phone so that people wanting to book onto the campsite can leave a message when we are out. We often find that people are very impatient nowadays, if they ring and leave a message  wanting a pitch, by the time we've got home and rung them back they will have found somewhere else! Another reason to stay at home as much as possible in the summer.
This winter we decided to put the answer phone away and just use our old normal one as the answer phone needs electric to run it. I reckon this should save us at least 50p!! :-)


I've done loads of catching up work indoors today, and as it was lovely sunny day another load of washing dried outside then floors washed, carpets hoovered, veggie curry prepared, freezer contents  listed. Halo polished! and  then also decided to bake a couple more loaves of bread as I want to turn some into breadcrumbs to store in the freezer ready for bread sauce or for drying.

Him Outside was away early again to work for the same customer as Wednesday, he was back with a cheque at lunchtime. After lunch he has been turning off and draining water from various places outside before next weeks snow that is forecast. Perhaps the Express were right when they said weeks ago that we were in for a long very cold winter starting in November.

From one kitchen window I've been keeping an eye on this apple tree. Here we are in mid November and lots are still hanging on despite that windy weather three weeks ago

It's in a sheltered spot between the conifer hedge and the Bramley and there have been some windfalls which I've picked up. They are extremely sharp so must be a variety that ripens in storage.

I've compared them to everyone of the 144 varieties described in this beautiful book

  (I originally bought this cheap from The Works - it has damaged pages at the front- to sell when we used to take books to Country Fairs and The Suffolk Smallholders Show, but then couldn't bear to part with it) but it doesn't really match any of the descriptions. It's a tree we planted and is about 15 years old, I've always thought it was a duel purpose tree but now I'm not so sure.
Like all of our other trees it has never ever had such a good crop.
I'm planning to pick all the rest off tomorrow and store them.


And a PS -Thank you to Gill and Karen for comments yesterday.

Back tomorrow.

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!