Egglestone Show

I never thought I'd say this but last weekend I felt a bit like a city girl. Me! A farmer's daughter. True enough I abandoned all thought of farming forty odd years ago. In fact I never abandoned the thought, it just never occurred to me that I would ever want to spend my adult life farming. And last weekend I guess I realised how removed I was from agricultural pursuits.

We went to visit family in Teesdale - a beautiful part of north England and we went to Egglestone Show. It was a lovely show. There was horseriding including tiny tiny tots riding ponies; a falconry display; carriage driving; glorious local food; sheep, cattle, even lamas and a tent full of homegrown veg to make David and I weep to look at the paltry size of own home grown efforts. The carrots, parsnips, leeks were ginormous.

It was a beautiful day and I had on my sandals which immediately outed me to be the city girl I have become. This was a September show with a slight chill in the wind even though the sun was shining. I needed knee high, leather boots. The type that are a cross between riding boots and wellies and are made from tip top brown leather. Every lady there from a three year old to a dowager duchess had on such boots. I had a bright green walking cagoule on too. Oh no...tweed or quilted jackets were de rigueur.

 

I quite liked the look and was quite tempted. But soon realised that to walk the children to school in suburban Manchester in such garb would look a tad out-of-place. It might do though for a walk over the local fields and hills so am very tempted by some boots.

Anyway  a good time was had by all. The veg were beyond my imagination but I reckon that my lemon drizzle cake would have stood a good chance of coming first in the lemon drizzle cake competition. I'm tempted to enter next year and deliver my cakes in sandals and cagoule.

Make your mind up.

You know what really irritates me: actors who wear spectacles as a part of their character and yet clearly are very very confused as to why they are wearing glasses.  The actor just twiddles and fiddles with the glasses. They put them on their nose; they take them off as they discuss state secrets; they put them on top of their head; they balance them out of the corner of their mouth. But one thing is absolutely clear in 20:20 vision they are not using them to improve their eyesight.

I watched a drama last night. The actress started well. She was taking notes and popped glasses on when writing and off when looking at her interviewee. She clearly needed the specs for reading or so I thought. Then she was seen walking in the park with the same glasses on (big designer ones at that) and went into a café and popped them on top of her head when she started talking with someone. It didn't add up. Apart from anything if the actress knew how much her character had paid for those designer spectacles she wouldn't treat them so cavalierly pushing them casually onto her crown from whence they could crash to the floor breaking and costing lots of money to replace.

I watched a film on Friday and the main character wore glasses all the way through. Fine. He played a bit of an uptight, nerdy character but if he needed glasses to see then glasses he needed. Then at the end when he had transformed himself overnight and I mean literally overnight into a confident, trendy bloke he was sans specs. Now there is another blog post there as to why confident, handsome characters need to shift the glasses and nerdy ones need to keep them but it was a miracle: he could see. He went to bed one night, placing his glasses on the bedside table and the next morning he had perfect vision. A walking optical sensation. There was a complete film just in that and probably more interesting than the one I'd just watched.

Wood 4

We haven't been to Robin's Wood for ages and ages. But we returned in style last week for some wild camping and it was glorious. Even with all 4 of us squashed into a very small 4 person tent we still enjoyed it. As you can see below a lot of hard work was endured.

Potters

There is a time warp in Buxton, Derbyshire. There is a small space up a street in that town where everything is happy and good and all right with the world. The place is called Potters and it's one of those old fashioned miniature department stores from the 1950s. It sells women's clothes, men's clothes, makes curtains and cushions for you and sells bedding and a whole lot more which I haven't discovered yet down one of its corridors.

On the face of it it looks very old fashioned. But if you linger and peer in at its floor to ceiling windows displays, they do have some lovely, modern gems as well as more olde worlde fashioned items. It's a treasure trove of wonders.

I can't resist entering to be greeted by 10 million shop assistants because that's another wonderful thing about Potters: it is full of knowledgeable ladies waiting to help. And when you pay for your item you get a hand-written receipt and the money is secreted away in an old fashioned wooden till drawer. And apparently they have been serving the good people of Buxton since the middle of the 19th century.

There used to be a similar shop called Addy's in my local village when I was a girl. It had glass counters with drawers visible beneath full of gloves, handkerchiefs and other miscellaneous items. There was a lady called Betty in the ladies section whom my mum knew and I remember one Christmas my Mum gave her some money and Betty guided me through the wonders of the shop giving me ideas of what to buy my mum, dad and brothers for Christmas.

Potters is like that so next time you are in Buxton, don't be put off by the slightly archaic appearance of the shop windows but venture in, you'll find something to your liking.

Beetrootgate

Oh dear I had a nightmare last night. I dreamt that I spilled beetroot on my auntie's brilliant white table cloth and then just sat and watched the deep purple juice stain away.

Oh dear I had a nightmare experience last night. I actually did spill beetroot onto my auntie's nice clean tablecloth. I had been so strict with my children, serving them the beetroot and instilling in them the need to be careful that a slice did not slip slowly off their plate onto the tablecloth. And what did I do.......forked too many beetroot slices at one time and they splurged quickly and deliberately onto the white cloth.

A gosh, an uncontrollable giggle, a swear word and we all stared at the purple splodge on the cloth. Up we all got spontaneously and took all the plates, cutlery and etceteras off the table while my auntie whipped the cloth off and into soak.

Then we reset the table, sat down and laughed a lot about the beetroot incident.

Food hatch

Let us talk hatches.....food hatches to be precise. Now that's a bit of a blast from the past. The children and I have just been to visit my auntie. She has a food hatch between her kitchen and dining room and the children love it. It's about 45cm wide by 30cm high with a narrow ledge and two little doors. It is for handing food through to the table from the kitchen instead of taking it round on foot and for popping the empties back through but it is really so much more.

You can play peep-po; you can play shops; you can play restaurants; you can play knocking and then running; you can simply open and shut it; you can chat; you can even try to get your entire nine year old body through from one side to the next.

Believe me we had to stay for an extra few hours to get another lunch in so it was fair that both children had had the equal number of opportunities to sit by the hatch.

My brother used to have a hatch in his old house but it was very big and had no doors and thus lost it's appeal somehow. You need it smallish and it has to have miniature doors with little knobs on so that again the nine year old can pull them to and fling them open.

Now I was thinking that I had missed the opportunity to construct a walk-in wardrobe as part of our extension last year but my children probably think otherwise.

Ice cream boat

Had a long weekend in Poole visiting my niece. They have ice cream boats down there, you know, which play a tune to announce their approach. Mega expensive ice creams but I needed no persuasion to paddle out and partake.

Ice creams just leaving