There May Be (Faint) Signs of Movement

We've received paperwork and signed it, deposit money has gone into solicitors client account........things may be happening at last on the buying front. I'll still not hold my breath!

On the selling front we had a couple round to see the bungalow Saturday morning, they didn't say much so don't know what they thought.The agents phoned to say the couple were not sure. Shan't hold my breath there either. We are being pestered by other agents all wanting to sell our bungalow. One company have knocked on the door 3 times and sent a letter, why they think they could do better than the company we are with I have no idea. We might drop the price a bit which will move it back to the top on Rightmove, but not until we've moved out and then the agents can show people round an empty house. I've gone off the idea of letting as we know  things need doing here and we could end up paying out several £1000 before we get anything back.

The weekend was a weekend of viewing sport on TV with the start of the Six Nations Rugby and  Davis Cup Tennis, all good viewing. The GB team got through to the next round of Davis Cup because of the young Canadian player swiping his tennis ball away in disgust and hitting the chair umpire right in the eye therefore getting his team disqualified. Ouch! It was 2 rubbers each so they were playing the deciding match although Kyle Edmunds was two sets up at the time so might have won anyway. Good to see so many GB men doing well and not having to rely on Andy Murray. I think there is Snooker on all week before Rugby again next weekend. While waiting to move we have turned into couch potatoes!

The first Saturday Carboot of the season at Needham Market was a bit of a flop - plenty of boots there but I think half were the same ones who were at Portman Road last Sunday.............tat! all I spent was £2 on a huge bag of kitchen paper rolls which was a saving. Although I use a dishcloth for wiping and rags for cleaning we do use kitchen roll as tissues and a few other odd jobs.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Quickly saving about £5 or more

This is how we save a bit of cash when we go out. It takes 2 minutes to gather mugs, coffee and spoon in small tub, milk in bottle, kettle boiled and pour water into stainless steel flask, edible something in bigger tub then everything into a bag. Done.
Our trip out Sunday morning wasn't very successful  although the idea was good. It was sunny in Ipswich and we decided to pop to Felixstowe just to check the padlocks on the beach hut and spray them with a bit of WD40 and have a cuppa while watching the sea. Halfway to Felixstowe and we ran into thick fog and down at the hut visibility was next to nothing and bitterly cold.

So we walked down the steps along the prom, opened up the hut, checked inside, oiled padlocks and hinges then back to the car, drove along the seafront (avoiding cafes and Sunday market) and right up to the dock view point - but still very foggy. Had our home-made cuppa and cake ( avoiding View Point cafe) and then home again, where the sun was still shining brightly.
Oh well.

Back in a flash
Sue

Nothing much

I think I need to welcome new followers but I can't be sure as I've lost track of numbers.

 Another week with not a lot happening ........... mainly grey, misty or drizzle especially Wednesday when I popped to Felixstowe. The Orwell  Bridge on the A14 takes traffic quite high over the Orwell and it was foggy enough to  feel like being in the clouds, not a bit like this photo below.

There was just a touch of sun Thursday morning when I went to Leiston to look after Florence for a while. She was a real grizzle-guts, too tired to be happy yet too nosy to fall asleep and I forgot to get a photo on the few occasions that she smiled.. It was quite interesting seeing an 8 month old at the weekend and a not quite 4 month old  on Thursday, the difference is quite amazing.
 Leiston is about to lose it's only Building Society -The Norwich and Peterborough Society was taken over by The Yorkshire and they are closing loads of branches. This means that when they build Sizewell C and D Nuclear power stations and the town grows there will be just the Barclays Bank left to deal with the increase in population.We moved there in 1992 just as they were finishing Sizewell B and the town had 3 building societies and 2 banks, 2 supermarkets and a proper Post Office, now there is just the Co-op Solar and the Post Office is inside another shop.  Progress is backwards for some things it seems.

Great excitement........Needham Market (a town that  also lost it's only bank a few years ago) carboot sale starts tomorrow - weather permitting -  and we have someone coming to see the bungalow but as we have boxes piled up making the place look even smaller than it is, I'm not hopeful. I did tell our Estate Agent to warn the man that we are in a muddle but he said he would come anyway.

So all in all not much to write about and no photos.
 When I very first started reading blogs someone had a picture of their hoover cylinder which had come un-clipped and spilled all over the floor and their trousers and I remember thinking 'if ever I write a blog that's something I wouldn't bother to photograph!' and today Ilona has a picture of the  cat litter trays - not going there either!


Have a good weekend whatever you are doing
Back Shortly
Sue

February 2nd

From my Country Wisdom and Folklore Diary

There are lots of weather sayings for February many of them connected to the Ancient Imbolc which became the Christian Candlemas, the most well known is

If Candlemas Day be fair and bright

Winter will have another flight

If Candlemas be dark with clouds and rain

Winter is gone and won't come again.

I'm loving this diary, it has sunrise and sunset times for every day so I can cheerfully say that daylight hours got longer by about 15  minutes over this week - Whoopee!

Many thanks for comments on yesterdays post

Back Soonish
Sue

February

February brings the rain, thaws the frozen ponds again.

So said Sara Coleridge in her months of the year poem.

The picture is from one of the Edwardian Lady books by Edith Holden. I've borrowed the image off t'internet as my copy is...................packed in a box.
 We have aconites and a few snowdrops in our very small garden, not much else although there are signs of other bulbs coming up.

When we were children it was considered lucky to say "Rabbits,Rabbits Rabbits" on the first of the month. They had to be the first words you spoke in the morning. Now I'm wondering ......Why?

According to the shops only one thing happens in February and that's Valentines day. We won't be wasting our pennies in buying any of the junk that is now available - all those silly soft toys - for grown ups? just don't get it I'm afraid. As for hearts on everything? a great sales ploy " Must have special PJs and cushions for Valentines" Really? 


My Books Read page tells me I read 12 books in January, which just proves how much free time is available while waiting to move. Oooops sorry, said I wouldn't mention that again. Actually that should be 13 as I quickly re-read 'Summer Half' one of Angela Thirkell's smaller novels.

My accounts book tells me that we did fairly well in Don't-spend-anything-extra-in-case-I've-done-my-sums-wrong month. Of course there were extras - the new kettle, getting photos of the wedding printed, having curtains cleaned to take with us, half-year car tax, MOT, booking venue for Col's 60th bash ( he wants to meet up with all his aunts,uncles, cousins etc without it being at a funeral!), virus protection for one lap top and paying for a library book that got left at hospital and vanished. We ate mainly from the freezer but still needed milk, fruit, veg and store-cupboard staples. Total spend for the whole month - absolutely everything except Council Tax -  £751.

We need to empty the freezer before we move   (Oh- done it again)so I went through it mid December to see how many main meals I could make from its contents and came up with a list of 32. We were out Christmas day and brought home boxing day dinner with us. Then of course Col had That bug and neither of us ate much for a few days so now at the beginning of February I've still got

A couple of chicken breasts

2 cheese and onion pasties

2 x half pound of bacon

2 very small lamb chops (only useful for curry)

1lb of mince (annoying as I usually split them into half pounds)

2 boxes of home made tomato and onion pizza topping

2 portions of  home made lasagne

2 portions of home made salmon/pasta bake 

A very small ham joint that was meant for after Christmas

So still enough for meals until halfway through February at least.

Back in a jiffy

Sue

Keep on keeping on

Odds and ends today as my blog seems to have turned into a book blog over the last few posts and I don't want to bore anyone who doesn't read. But thank you for the comments on Angela Thirkell yesterday. I'm cross that I'm late finding her as the books not re-printed by VMC are so expensive on Amazon, but there again maybe I needed to be "of a certain age" to enjoy her subtle wit, I can't imagine I would have enjoyed them so much while in my 20s.

So many of my favourite blogs have stopped recently. Everyone has so much happening in their lives that they have no time to blog. I'm beginning to feel that my life is lacking as I still have plenty of time to write as we are still B***** waiting for a solicitor to sort the paperwork! I guess it's all a matter of deciding which things you like doing best, in my case reading, writing and some crafting, and limiting to the minimum things that don't seem so important (obsessive cleaning, faffing and shopping)
 (Our solicitor phoned, there is still a delay, She's been sent paperwork but still no proper details of the bit of land that Mrs F bought about 10 years after buying the house. I'm so fed up with writing about this cock-up I'll NOT mention the house move again until it actually happens!).

Walked round the Portman Road carboot sale on Sunday morning. It's the only one that carries on all year round but what a load of tatty junk, where on earth does it all come from? Most looked as if it had been fished out of someone's rubbish bin. Felt like singing "What A Load Of  Rubbish" which is probably what the crowd at the football ground on the other side of the road have been singing all season................I.T.F.C are not doing well at the moment!
The only thing I saw of any interest was a huge collection of Home Farmer magazines but the woman was wanting £1 for 3 - silly money for a car boot sale. I'd probably had several of them in the past anyway so left them where they were. We came home for coffee and kept our money for another day.

  Over the weekend we saw two out of three children and just our grandson, now 8 months old - a very happy little chap, who will soon be crawling

 Our youngest was poorly so wasn't able to come out, but we will see Florence later this week as we are looking after her while youngest has an appointment. Actually it will just be me going over to Leiston as
 Colin has gone down with a horrible cold and clogged up sore throat. The chemo he had all last year knocked out his immune system and he now seems to pick up everything that goes round and gets it much worse than other people.I shall cart him off to the doctor I think, as he may need antibiotics.

Regarding the courgette and  lettuce shortage that made the news a week or so ago, I noticed that Morrisons had a sign on their Iceberg lettuces..... " limited to 2 per customer". My thought was who on earth would want to buy one let alone 3 of these nasty tasteless version of a lettuce!

We seem to have got through the grey days of January, I'd better find some weather sayings for February.

Back Soon
Sue

The World of Angela Thirkell

"The daughter of a classical scholar, Thirkell was also the cousin of Rudyard Kipling. Her novels, usually peopled with genteel, snobbish characters, are noted for their gentle irony, absurdity of tone, and understated sophistication."

That is what it says about her novels on Fantastic Fiction and the 'irony' maybe explains why some people love her writing and others can't get into it at all.

She was born in 1890 and died in 1961 and wrote the Barsetshire series between 1933 and her death.

I worked in libraries in the 1970s but don't remember her books being in stock, so perhaps they were well out of fashion during that decade.

But Virago Vintage Classics began reprinting her books in 2012 and I was drawn to the cover of the 1st,  High Rising, when it kept popping up on my Amazon page as something I might like to read.

Once I got into her way of writing it made me smile and that is what I like about her books. You mustn't be put off by 'the genteel snobbish characters'. Don't take offence at the gentry's way of speaking about their servants. It is this very absurdity that makes them so enjoyable.

And of course we do irony quite well in Suffolk anyway.

 This is a paragraph from the 1945 novel Miss Bunting that probably explains why her books make some readers despair and never read any further but make others smile and read on.

A nice bit of  fat boiled bacon off the ration (which for the benefit of any readers from another planet we will explain to mean not that the bit of bacon in question comes off your ration but that it isn't  and never was on it) with young potatoes and peas from the garden is not to be despised. Frank did not despise it, by which happy chance his elders were able to talk in peace for a time.

 I've read 14 so far, and as Virago re-print I borrow them from the library (although recently they annoyingly published a few only as e books) and look out for them for pennies at charity shops. I actually picked up some very old tatty Penguin reprints from the 1950's at a car boot sale several years ago but they had such small print that I couldn't read them. A kind blog reader sent some old hardbacks that she had in duplicate so my collection is growing slowly.

Although each book is a separate story they have characters  that pop up now and again in different books, which can be very frustrating as I remember the name but not always their back story. So with Christmas money from Father-in-Law I  ordered Angela Thirkell's World ................

....... Created by an avid Thirkell fan, this reference was designed to help fellow readers keep straight the hundreds of characters that populate the 29 novels of Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire series. Organised alphabetically, the book includes the name of every character, a chronological list of the books in which he or she appears, and a summary of what readers learn about the character in each book.

It finally arrived all the way from the USA last week - the cheapest copy on Amazon. Now I might need to re-read all 14 and put all the others on my wish list so I can make good use of the book. Of course the ones I own are................packed in a box!

Back Shortly
Sue