Cards, Lights and Snow

 

Yay ... I've got my first Christmas card, thanks John.

It;s starting to feel a lot like Christmas now, especially on my evening doggy walk around town with Suky.  The lights are beautiful and run the full length of the High Street as well as in most of the little alleyways and Weinds.

Just lovely and festive.

And what's that I spy just now from my front doorstep as the mist over the hills starts to clear ...

... I thought so!!

A first sprinkling of snow.

Now it really is starting to feel like Christmas.

Sue xx

Back on the Market

Roll up, roll up ... it's time to buy a house.

With two homes and enclosures for your feathered friends.

And lots of lovely space with good access to the main road.

Seriously though ... we are back on the market as of yesterday and hopefully, fingers and every other spare appendage crossed we will soon sell and be off on our next adventure, once again mortgage free and raring to go.

Estate Agents Details

Go on have a good nosy ....  you know that you want too  😃😄

 ... and yes I have  told them about the two errors!!

Sue xx

Suddenly 2020 Feels a Whole Lot Better

 

They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery .... if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor". But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot ... they "didn't have a pot to piss in" & were the lowest of the low.

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be.

Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies, by then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof ... hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying "Dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and 'chew the fat'.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would Sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When re-opening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night 'the graveyard shift' to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, 'saved by the bell' or was considered 'a dead ringer'.

And that's the truth ... now, whoever said History was boring?

Jeremy Hanlon

2 October 2019  · 

 

This suddenly makes 2020 look a whole lot better doesn't it  😃

Sue xx

A Jam a Day ...

 

So, the jam fest that is my Advent Calendar has started.

I'm loving the look of it, it's like having a dolls house full of food on my kitchen worktop.

It's taking up rather a lot of space, but that's fine this is a part of the worktop I don't use too much anyway.

Luckily I hadn't put the sleeve of the box into the recycling bin, because as soon as I opened the first little door yesterday I realised that the labels on the jars are in French.  So I cut out the part I needed and I've slipped it behind the calendar in case I need the translation each day.

I had half of yesterday's jar for my breakfast this morning it's very tasty as you would expect from fruit heavy Bonne Maman jam.  But I'm going to be getting a backlog if I don't eat more than half a jar in one go  luckily up to the now the jars have a Best Before date of June next year.  I have been racking my brains to think of other ways to have the jam apart from on toast.  Up to now I have:

Jam Tarts

Jam Roly Poly

Jam Pinwheels

... I'm not doing very well am I, any suggestions for diddy little jars of jam?

In other news, today we have had the phone interview to arrange a mortgage to buy our house here in Garstang and it's all looking very promising, if scarily expensive.  Our ages mean that we can at the very most get a mortgage of eight years, but of course we will only have it until we can pay it off in full on the sale of the Welsh house.  We have our fingers firmly crossed that it will sell quickly now that it is being marketed through a more knowledgeable local agent, with actual family links to our house.  Of course if it sells before the mortgage is in place and the sale goes through we have no need to worry at all ... and no mortgage to pay.

It's no wonder that I don't play Monopoly very often!!

Sue xx

Remember Who You Were

This year has been a good one for bogging us down in rules and regulations

Tying our hands with what we can and can't do 

That most of us can't even see

But yet have to believe in

 

It can sap your spirit

But not your soul

Remember who you were

And what was ahead

Remember when we didn't know what lay ahead

And it didn't worry us

When we didn't even think past the next few hours

And yet lived for each day

We are all still in us

And we know deep down there is much promise ahead

But for now it's time to hibernate methinks

Be nice to ourselves and ride the year out quietly

Safely and softly

❤

Suky's Favourite Television 'Programme'

 

Most evenings I watch the six o'clock BBC1 news.  After the national news has been on for half an hour it's then time for the local news.  Now in this part of the North West of England the local news can only be viewed in SD rather than the HD that the national news has just been broadcast in.  We get a large red screen announcement telling us to turn over to Channel 1 rather than the 101 that is BBC1 HD on Freeview.

Are you still with me?

For the last ten minutes of this HD break a fixed set of snippets of various BBC programmes comes on, and one of them is one David Attenborough's series ...which includes baby penguins.

Suky loves the baby penguins and sits waiting for her little friends to appear ... every night.

I don't have the heart to turn over and watch the local news!!

Sue xx

Simple Meals

 

I mentioned the other day that I am trying to eat simply, and at the moment I am also trying to eat my way through the contents of the food cupboard.  I moved from the Van to this flat with a ridiculous amount of food in stock and I am determined that it will not be travelling with me again at the start of next year.

I am making meals out of what I find and only buying fresh things to accompany them when I have to.  I found a pack of 'Ready to Wok' noodles in there the other day, so I raided the fridge for all the bitty bits that I had left before I went shopping.  A couple of slices of pepper, two tomatoes, just over half an onion, half a tub of creamy Violife cheese and a good squirt of garlic puree ...

... all combined with the noodles to make a very tasty and satisfying evening meal, with the added bonus that it was all ready within ten minutes.

The noodles are gorgeous and a nice and speedy change from pasta, what have I been missing all these years!!

Sue xx