At Last - All about our trip to NI Monday 14th - Saturday 19th

Well, not ALL about the trip...

Some edited high lights...

We were staying with cousins and friends that we've been getting to know again after decades of being apart. Some we met up with for the first time in years last year, so this was a second meeting.

It is a wonderful thing to be reunited with family and friends after so long, and find that we are still family and friends despite the gap in getting together. I'm not going to go into details, just to say that the hospitality throughout our stay was of EPIC, Biblical proportions. I daren't count the amount of cake, home-made shortbread, pieces of cake, platefuls and platters of food, cups of tea, bottles of wine that came our way. Thank you to everyone!

places we visited;

Tuesday 15th;
Newtonnards, ancient little town at the North end of Strangford Lough. Not much to say - we had various things to take care of, including eating cake (of course).

Tuesday 15th:Wet and rainy day, unlike the day before. We had a guided tour of Belfast City Hall

http://visitbelfast.com/things-to-do/member/belfast-city-hall

I didn't take many pictures this time; just this one of some stained glass in the entrance hall because I love the colours;

Then, after lunch we went to Paterson's Spade Mill, a National Trust Property.  The same man on the website photographs was there, hammering away at a block of iron to make hand-made spades (available to purchase for £120 - not today, thanks). 

American accent; "How long do these spades last?"

Pause

Northern Irish accent; "A lifetime. Or two or three lifetimes."

That must have been dark, dirty, noisy, hot, cold, dusty, exhausting work. Outside there were the ruins of the one-roomed cottages the workers lived in. You will look in vain for the waterwheel; it used a turbine, which appears very like an unexploded mine;

https://irishwaterwayshistory.com/2012/04/23/sluices-and-streams/

The day ended with a mega-meal in a restaurant in Carrickfergus; "What will you have for dessert, Madam?" Me "Just a spoon, please", so we ordered three puds between the six of us and a soon each. I could have started something here.

Thursday 16th

A Hot day - the weather was unpredictable, so say the least! We had planned to go on The Gobbins Cliff Path - have a look at the great video on the website!

On the day I backed out after the first section. I had been concerned about the up-ness and down-ness of the walk, and had contacted the centre in advance. In the end, I decided that I would hold the party up as my pace was So Slow, and we went back to the centre and enjoyed the exhibition instead. Maybe another time. 

We went on to stay with more cousins where we had an amazing day; food, wine, tea, talk, music, chat, food, wine...  quite a celebration.

Friday 17th

 Off to Londonderry. Or Derry. Or L'Derry. Whatever. The sun was shining as we drove over the Glenshane pass through the Sperrins. 

I could see where the peat had been cut and stacked on the slopes across the valley, and the colours and the scenery was beautiful. We didn't stay for long in the city; we've had a good look round twice before (the first time was when we got mixed up in the Apprentice Boys' Parade) and we were still too full of food to move far or fast.

We had a grand time with our friends, (they are the ones with the Airfryer) talking about our children (we are all dinkies when they left England)

Saturday 18th

We left at about lunchtime to return to our base, staying with cousins in Belfast. Coming back down the Glenshane Pass, you have the whole country spread before you (on a clear day like it was then!).

Just a couple of days left... we were out and about until the very last minute. I'll finish the story another time...

Wednesday 30th August - A Day Out

A Day Out in the rain...

Guildford was cold and wet and miserable. The road going in was choked with traffic, all, seemingly, due to a hole being dug at the bottom of bridge street.

So why were we there? I wanted to have a look at bottom-of-the-range digital pianos, as many of my new starters just have keyboards at home - not the same thing at all - so the first call was Andertons. On the way we walked past the www.futoncompany.co.uk showroom; our eye was caught by several smart pieces of furniture;



  


The dressing table can also be configured as a work station... oh hey, I should stop here or else print out the entire catalogue...

After a snack lunch (cornish pasty, if you must know, but don't bother with the potato wedgies) and a brief (there's a pun in there) foray into Marks and Spencers we went on a search for

Writing Maps which I have read about here https://www.writingmaps.com/



and would like to see, but are not stocked by Ted Baker or Anthropologie, in spite of rumours to the contrary, and Waterstones don't do them either.

and knitting wool - both the shops that I know about have closed

and had a look at the Sale in Rohan clothes; last time we went, the sale clothes hadn't been delivered to the shop, this time they have just been sent back to the warehouse.

We did buy Jamie Oliver's latest, as some of the recipes look decidedly promising and it was half-price at Waterstones;



So, on the shopping list are ingredients for messy beefburgers (minced beef, pesto, tinned tomatoes, mozzarella, buns, but I might do potatoes instead) and rendang beef and cauli rice (more minced beef, cauliflower, rendang powder, fresh mint, light coconut milk - no rice? somehow he magics the cauliflower into rice). I might even have a go at Buddy's flapjack biscuits (butter, dried fruit and nuts, oats, SR flour, syrup) once I've picked all those horrible tasting pesky little goji berries out of the fruit and nut mix we've got leftover from something.

Tuesday 29th August - London Again

London again today, for a routine appointment at the chest clinic. It was as early start this time - for an early appointment.

I have to say I was a bit apprehensive as the lung function results had been lower than usual, but a very brisk consultant went through the figures in some detail and and reassured me that, taken over time, he still considered me to be about the same as I had been for the past three years. We left the hospital much earlier than I expected (they can run several hours late!) and with a light heart.

So, what to do next?

The last software updates on our phones have had a bad effect on the battery consumption. So, first stop, in order to save the battery, we headed to Daunt's bookshop and bought a small pocket map of Central London. The scale makes the new location of The Design Centre, in what was the Commonwealth Institute Building in Holland Park, look reasonably close. So we walked over that way, the The Boltons and past other Very Des Res Areas of Great Beauty and Huge Expense.

Not every historical house is in good condition; Alfred Hitchcock's old house looks to be in considerable disrepair, as though about to be a set for the next film.

English Heritage Blue plaque in 153 Cromwell Road, London, SW5 commemorating Hitchcock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Hitchcock

 And the house where Beatrix Potter grew up is now a very modern primary school. That's the great joy of walking around London - all the accidental discoveries along the way.

Now, the Design Centre. I have only the faintest memories of the old Commonwealth Institute; all those flagpoles at the front, and a building that looked as if it was trying to fly;

The Building suffered from water ingress nearly all of its life as the Commonwealth Institute, but fortunately it is been repaired and given a new use as the latest home of the Design Museum. This website   is well worth visiting as you can see the structure of the building when it was empty awaiting repair. And this link has pictures which date from the sort of time that I went to see it on a school trip back in the 1960s. (This website is a bit of a 'find', and I'm going to add it to my feedly.)

Aplogies for all these links - but the pictures and information on them are better than I could type in.

The Design Museum is A-mazing! And free to enter the main exhibition! I'm sure I remember an original Design Centre somewhere near Regent Street back in the 1980s, and then we visited it a couple of times when it was neat Tower Bridge. This new venue is brilliant - the design of the building matches the idea of the museum. Just look at these photographs here... 

The exhibits are interesting too, particularly a great wall of objects at the entrance.

.

A crowd sourced wall at the Design Museum displays around 200 objects which form an integral part of our daily life. 

Monday 28th August - Bank Holiday

Morning - I have been doing crochet, and writing thank-you letters. Four done, three to go. That's four for people who gave us such tremendous hospitality in Northern Ireland, and then two wedding anniversaries we went to, and a day with my godmother.

Afternoon - visiting an open garden in the National Gardens Scheme; Durrance Manor in Shipley. My father came along - we arrived tenminutes early, which was just as well, it seems to be an incredibly popular garden and the cars were parked everywhere.

https://www.ngs.org.uk/?bf-garden=19175

The blurb says:

Durrance Manor

This 2 acre garden surrounding a Medieval Hall House (not open) with Horsham stone roof, enjoys uninterrupted views over a ha-ha of the South Downs and Chanctonbury Ring. There are Japanese inspired gardens, a large pond, wild flower meadow and orchard, colourful long borders, hosta walk, and vegetable garden. A Monet style bridge over a pond with waterlilies should be in place in 2017.

True - we saw all of these!

It was baking hot, and so perfect for schlepping round some one else's garden and admiring their hard work, rather than getting hot and bothered in one's own garden. I didn't take many photographs - you could follow the link and view the gallery for the flowers. I just took these of some of the sculptures that were here and there

no sculpture - just a riot of flowers

Then home, with my father, for a sort of tea of cheese sandwiches and wine. Perfect sort of day.

Last Week - Tuesday 22nd to Friday 25th August

Let's lump all the days together in one post letter;

Tuesday was a long drive through England from Birkenhead to home. The weather improved as we travelled, and by the time we arrived at our front door I had discarded my warm fleece and my socks and we were feeling pretty roasted. I was cold almost the whole time we were away; the fleece that I took "just in case" became pretty much my second skin!

When we got home, it was just unpacking and putting away and sitting about.

Wednesday was more picking up the threads of home-life - collecting the cats and their remarkably smelly bedding from the cattery, laundry (including the cat beds, ugh) and shopping. All the NI clothes could go into the laundry - it was back to Summer T-shirts again for us!

Thursday I didn't bother to get dressed until it was time to take my father to the funeral of one of his friends, that way I didn't have to change! So a slow and sleepy morning, then find some suitable clothes. It is a strange thing to attend the funeral of someone who is almost a complete stranger. The only connection is that the "celebrant" turned out to be the same person who did my mother's funeral. That was disconcerting.

In the evening I got to my regular Thursday get-together with a couple of dear friends. I more or less finished the scarf I had been knitting in N Ireland while we nattered and knitted or did whatever we were doing.

Friday. That was a Royal Brompton Hospital day, up in London. The lung function appointment wasn't until the afternoon, so we went to visit Carlyle's House at 24 Cheyne Row. It is a delightful place, left as far as possible as when the Great Man (and let us not forget his wife, Jane) lived there.

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/carlyles-house

They seem to have been visited by Everybody. Including Chopin, who played this actual piano;

and now I have played it too. (It is dreadfully out of tune and clearly needs some work; the guide had given me permission to try it, but very soon said "I think that's enough now").

Himself was very taken by Mr Carlyle's Reading Chair and has spent some time considering the possibility of adding an adjustable reading desk to his own leather chair.

I was very grateful that the outside privy has been brought up-to-date, and is in perfect working order.

(The red notice states "You are welcome to use these facilities". So I did.)

We spent some time mooching along the Kings Road and then back along the Fulham Road to the hospital. Lung function tests are just a matter of breathing in and out of a mouthpiece on a complicated bit of equipment. But it is all in how deeply, or how quickly you breathe, whether you switch from "in" to "out" all of a sudden or hold your breath in between... so it takes quite a few goes to get the "technique" right, and then you have to be able to replicate the results. Once that was all over, and I had a mega plaster stuck on one ear where they had taken a blood sample ("sharp stab" - they weren't exaggerating) we repaired to Daunts Books (my favourite bookshops) on the Fulham Road and then to a coffee shop to recover. I bought Stephen King "On Writing" which has been on my list for a very long time.

http://londonbookshops.org/shops/daunt-books-chelsea.html

Home. Please. Thank you!

Saturday 26th August - The New Gadget

Another baking hot day. Being Bank Holiday weekend we decided not to go anywhere as the main roads round here will be thronged with everyone rushing to the seaside.

We mooched around town, buying a few bits and pieces that I want to send to friends and family in Northern Ireland as thank-you-for-having-me presents. Then, decision time! Oh Yeah! We've been pondering this ever since we saw one of these in action the week before last;

  

It is an Airfryer! Our friends cooked sausages and little roastie sliced potatoes in half the time it would take using a conventional oven. Will it do croissants - that's an important question! And the answer is yes - 4 minutes from thinking to eating. Should have let them cool down a bit first, really.  

We spent the rest of the afternoon looking up recipes to see what else it will do - although it is called an airfryer, it is really just a small fan oven. So, providing we can find a container to sit on the foil rack we can cook sludgy food as well as your fried stuff. 

I'm looking forward to being served a plate of these sometime soon.

Chicken Tikka cooked in airfryer

Prawns cooked in Airfryer

 Yum!

Oh, all these references to Northern Ireland? We got back on Tuesday, that would be 22nd August, from a week there visiting friends and family. I'll post about it - it's just that a lot has happened since then as well!

  

Sunday 27th August - Now, what has been happening?

Let's see - last post was 10th August. I've enough for a score of posts since then - every day, it seems, except today, has been packed full.

So, I'll start with today and work backwards.

Nothing - well, almost nothing has happened. I guess the main event has been high-speed croissants for breakfast - but more of that in yesterday's post which will be coming up next.

I have learned how to crotchet - well, that started last night, after I ripped back the scarf I had been knitting while in Northern Ireland. The scarf was a failure - I was going round and round on circular needles, and when I cast off it rolled itself up into a nasty narrow snake.

I'd always thought of crochet as a Dark Art, and apart from a roundish coaster which I made in the August-of-making-something-every-day a few years back, hadn't really done anything. (I'm not counting the Tunisian Crotchet Blanket Project, which has stalled at the sewing-together phase).

And perhaps late at night, after a glass of wine, and in poor light, was a bad time to start. But, it seems to be going ok for now.

 
The peace and quiet of today has been blissful. I haven't had to talk to anyone (except BB) all day. He's had to sort out next-door's computer, (which was just checking that the neighbour next-door had got the order right for his new machine. He's finally moving off XP, which I gather is Significant.)

But apart from a few pleasantries with the other neighbour on the other side, I've had a day off "peopling". I'm beginning to feel human-ish.

Right. It will have to be new posts for the other days - too, too much for just a single news bulletin.

Thursday 10th August - Preparing for Next Term

There's always a lot of things to get done in the Summer holidays. I've done most of my planning for the class music lessons, and I've begun to start teaching myself to play classical guitar, as I have found myself scheduled to teach it to a class of thirty youngsters next term.

Beginning to start to learn? That might sound a bit weird, but I mean what I say, or type. The first stage is always to scope out the size of the task, and make sure you understand the terminology, helpful diagrams and specific vocabulary. A bit like reading through a recipe book and assembling the ingredients and utensils.

Oh, and I have washed, disinfected, rinsed, dried and packed away approximately two-and-a-half-dozen ocarinas. All in a day's work for a music teacher. They are safely stowed away in the boot of my car ready for September.

Thursday 10th August - Post

This arrived in the post the other day;

The post mark is 21.12.2016.

The card comes from a gentleman who used to have piano lessons with me, who always heads his cards with the year... "Christmas 2016"

What a pleasant surprise! I wonder where it has been all this time.

Wednesday 9th August - Isaiah 40v10

Found this in one of the churches we visited last week.

It's a sort of "Thought for the Day"

Isaiah 41:10

SUNDAY               Do not fear
MONDAY             I am with you
TUESDAY            Do not be dismayed
WEDNESDAY     I will strengthen you
THURSDAY         I will help you
FRIDAY               I will uphold you
SATURDAY         I am your God

originally

KJV
Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

Lolcat 
Lookz! Celing Cat comes wif strong pawz, da rule for him; lookz! his cheezburgerz for da peeps r wif him and his catnipz 2!

I've been enjoying reading the lolcat Bible (it is on wikipedia). It certainly livens up Paul's Epistles.

Friday 4th August - oh, and another thing

If you send someone a postcard, it is a good idea to use waterproof ink.

I sent a card to my godmother. When I phoned her some time later, she thanked me for the card, said she enjoyed the picture, but couldn't read the message as it had been raining on the day it was delivered.

Sigh

Thursday 4th August - This'n'that

We've been out and about today and made a few discoveries.

The ghurkas made a suspension bridge to link North Stoke and South Stoke.

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2490217

If you are wearing polarized sunglasses while you are operating you digital camera, you can only use the camera in landscape orientation if you want to see the image of what you re taking.

Playing hymns on a harmonium is hard work. Physically (those pedals were stiff) and mentally (remembering the tune and guessing the harmony)

My phone doesn't record step counts properly when it is in my handbag. We walked side by side, and he did 10,000+ steps and only did about 4,000+

I saw a weasel today. I've never seen one before. It was on a path through a woodland; it emerged, ran a few steps towards up, and then disappeared into the undergrowth. We couldn't take a picture (not because of the polarized sunglasses, I hasten to add.)

Picture of the "Least Weasel" from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel

 
He saw it too, albeit too briefly. "It's a weasel if it moves in a snake-like fashion".
There was a rhyme in my Enid Blyton diary (back in the 1960's) that taught the difference between a stoat and a weasel. I've tried to track it down, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't it;

Weasels are weasily recognised, but stoats are stoatally different.

Wednesday 2nd August -

He that has a little tiny wit, 
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
Must make content with his fortunes fit, 
Though the rain it raineth every day.

And it is.
Raining. And will be, today and tomorrow, according to the forecast.

That's because I went out and watered my brussel sprout plants this morning. Wonder of wonders, there are tiny little sprouts growing all up the stems!

The french beans and the peas are finished, and I shall chuck them in the compost bin, caterpillars and all, once the rain stops.

I am wondering if I can summon the determination to start doing walks, a couple of times a week. I have set himself the challenge of gathering together a portfolio of Interesting Walks, of around 2-3 miles, mostly on level-ish terrain, preferably including a coffee shop, and not too far from here - say up to 45 mins drive.

www.thebmc.co.uk

No, not there.

And not today, unless we weatherproof and boot up.


(King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2)

Tuesday 1st August - Knitting Tangles

There is nothing like knitting for learning patience, perseverance, and all sorts of goodly and desirable virtues.

And also for increasing one's vocabulary of unfortunate and inappropriate words and phrases.

I've two main projects on the go.

This yarn is called Bamboozle

It comes in hanks, which have to be carefully laid out and rolled into a ball before you can knit with them. Notice - FIVE little balls of wool beside an the hank. That's because they came from a hank which had four joins in it. Unimpressed.

Here is the front - the yarn has random changes of colour and also of thickness - one moment you are knitting with slippery, silky-soft thin yarn, the next moment it has turned into something more like cotton wool. It is surprisingly easy to manage, though, and I love the finished texture. However, it is extremely difficult to measure how long or wide the piece is, which is why I haven't ended it off, but left balls of yarn attached at the top in case I need to add some more.

Which means I have to knit the sleeves next, in order to lay the pieces together to see if the armholes will be the same size for the front and the sleeves.

I could have shown you a finished sleeve. At the weekend I had almost completed it, but then I discovered a mistake right down at the cuff. And then another mistake right at the start, when casting on the stitches to begin knitting. I went through the usual process;

step 1; stop and consider whether it mattered
step 2; surely no-one would notice
step 3; actually it would show
step 4 rip out the knitting and gather up the mental strength to start again.

No matter. I have another WIP to turn to; a blue medium-weight jumper I started in the Spring. It is knitted using a method called "top-down". You use "circular" needles

 
which means that you can knit round and round in circles. So, for a "top-down" jumper, you cast on for the neck, knit down as far as the shoulders, leave stitches on a holder to add sleeves in later, and continue down to the waist. Then you get some needles joined by a wire, go back to the hole you left for the sleeve and put those stitches on the needle and knit the sleeve down to the cuff. Are you with me so far?

The other way of knitting round and round and round is to use a set of four identical needles, with a point at each end;



you spread your tube of knitting around three (sometimes four) needles, and use another one to knit with. So you knit the stitches off a needles onto the spare needle, releasing a needles to knit the next lot with. I thought I'd try this technique with the second sleeve. Big mistake - I was well down the second sleeve when I discovered that my knitting was now much looser, so this sleeve was about an inch wider than the other one.

Deep breath, and rip out the sleeve. So, my blue jumper looks like this at the moment;

Because of the way the jumper is constructed, you can try it on before it is finished, which I did. I'm relieved to discover that it is a good fit, and I like it very much indeed. Which is just as well, as on Monday morning, after several inches of knitting, I found that I was doing the pattern incorrectly. Sigh. Still, I'm getting good at ripping back the stitches, and then carefully picking them all up again (the secret is to use a finer needle to pick them up). Last night I discovered one incorrect stitch about ten rows back. Sigh. Yes, it will matter. Half-an-hour's delicate work with a crochet hook, dropping the stitch down and working it back up again and all is well.

The advantage of this form of construction is that there will be no seams to sew up - once I have knitted the last stitch and darned in the loose ends, it will be finished. The disadvantage, is that as I knit round and round the sleeve, I have to keep turning the whole garment to untwizzle the knitting. It is also quite a warm thing to have bundled on your lap, which is why I took a break from knitting it during the spell of baking hot weather back in July. I'm hoping I finish it fairly quickly before I forget what I am doing and have to start over again...