EVERYONE OFF THE TREADMILL

My son got away on time this morning, the taxi was prompt, the trains were on time and except for a small glitch at Sheffield station, which seems to be in a state of total disarray his journey went very well. He called me at three to let me know that he had arrived at his hotel and was about to have a nice pot of tea brought to his room. He has the same room as on his last visit and he tells me that the on-suite bathroom has received an upgrade and a lovely old rocking chair has been added to the already considerable comforts on offer.

He likes to be comfortable and a good menu is a must, his hotel in Castleton boasts a breakfast menu of twenty two separate dishes which is much nicer than just full English or Continental when one is staying for a week or so. From the windows of his room he has a view of Peveril Castle on the one side and Mam Tor on the other, you really cannot get much better than that.

I hope that he has a good relaxing break and returns to the fray refreshed, he is so very tired at the moment, he works much too hard I think.

Here at Orchard Cottage it was business as usual , the bread was made before my son left this morning and Pa and I had an unusually early breakfast which was nice for a change. I had a loaf to deliver to a friend at the local garden centre and while I was there I could not resist buying a few more plants, A pink foxglove and some gorgeous knifofia plants which I do not seem able to grow successfully from seed.

Our little cat is as usual picketing my sons room, she misses him when he is away and as soon as she sees the rucksack and hold all she becomes quite sad. She will most likely sleep on his bed tonight as she often does at such times.
Pa and I had fish for dinner, some beautiful plaice which I cooked simply by dipping them in seasoned flour and frying them quickly in clarified butter. I served them with some chips and a salad. My son hates fish so while the cats away and all that.

I am praying that Pa behaves himself this week as he can be a handful when my son is away and I often have a bad time of it , One thing is certain my lovely son will have the rest he needs and that makes me happy no matter what else goes wrong. I am planing a surprise or two for him on his return and we both look forward to hearing his travellers tales,so the cat and I will console each other and I must admit that I shall not miss the deadlines and constraints caused by his unusual working pattern. Every silver lining has a cloud? I think I got that wrong! One way or another we are all off the treadmill for a few days and that must do us all good I am sure.

HOLIDAY PREPARATIONS

Most of today was spent preparing for my sons holiday which begins tomorrow. A great deal of stuff has to be packed into a small holdall and a medium sized ruck sack, fortunately I do this so often that it is almost second nature and with care everything comes out at the other end barely creased at all. When ever I pack for my son or for Pa when he goes in to hospital I always include a typed list of everything in the cases, this makes packing up at the end of the holiday much less fraught, and if you have lost an item at least you know what it is. I am not sure if that makes sense but at least I know what I mean!
At this time of the year you can be fairly certain that the weather in Derbyshire's Dark Peak will be cold. Only once in all the years I lived there do I remember a week in march that was so warm that we went swimming in a deep pool at Milldale. Sweaters , fleeces and thick corduroy shirts are the order of the day and warm pyjamas as many of the lovely old hotels do not have double glazing.

Once the packing had been done I popped out to the shops for a few last minute toiletries and some treats for the cat. We ran out of these last night and by bed time she was demanding a new supply with menaces. Before I was halfway to the shops it began to pour with rain so I quickly donned my yellow waterproof poncho......not at all attractive but very practical and continued on my merry way.
When I arrived home everyone, including the cat was fast asleep, I can not help feeling that something is not quite right but hey-ho there is no use fretting about it. I woke the men folk GENTLY!....with a mug of coffee and then went upstairs to dry out. My word I did look peculiar, my hair stuck up in a very odd fashion and my nose was an unflattering shade of red, due no doubt to the freezing rain which had battered me all the way home.
It was lovely to slip on a warm fleece dressing gown and some soft slippers while I found myself some dry things to wear. Afterwards I sipped my coffee and treated myself to a shortbread biscuit, I felt I deserved a little reward.

We had dinner very early tonight as my son has not slept since Saturday afternoon and is making an early start in the morning. I am to make him a breakfast of toasted cheese before he leaves , I doubt if Pa will join us so I shall feed him later.

It will be quiet without my son at home, he laughs and make jokes all the time and it is almost impossible to be miserable in his presence. I an praying for some fine weather so that I can spend some time in the garden next week, although I am still very sore from my fall I think that perhaps a little trot about in the vegetable garden will do me good . I always fell better when I am out of doors.
The cat Twiggy is as I write draped across the windowsill with her paws upon the radiator and is purring blissfully, she has now received some of t=her cat treats and so honour is satisfied.
From time to time a ladybird crawls over her fur and she twitches a little but is far too lazy to move today. After several days spent cavorting about the garden poor puss has for the time being returned to her winter habits and I expect that she will spend tonight curled up either on my bed or Pa's. She misses my son dreadfully when he is away and often spends whole days sitting either on his bed or outside his bedroom door. The moment he returns the contrary little madam proceeds to ignore him utterly, she really is an odd little beast.

BACK AMONG THE LIVING

Let me apologise at once for regaling you with endless ghost stories these past days, it was all because of a slight accident in the garden on Thursday.
It was such a beautiful spring like morning that I decided to venture at last in to my poor neglected garden. I decided to tackle the flower garden at the front of the house as I had some rather good perennials ready to plant. This could not be done of course until I had cleared away all the dead stalks left over from last year.
I strolled down to the bottom of the orchard to collect the wheelbarrow and that is when I fell and hurt my leg quite badly. There was no one within call and for a while I could not move, I was beginning to think I should be found the next morning probably frozen to the barrow........sorry about the awful joke. It took me about twenty minutes to get to my feet again and it was painfully obvious that I had done some damage to my already dodgy knee. My other leg too was quite bad as I had two deep cuts, a mass of bramble scratches and the beginnings of what have turned out to be some pretty spectacular bruises.
I hobbled back indoors and attended to the cuts, put witch hazel on the bruises and strapped up the injured knee as well as I could. Needless to say I did not do very much gardening after that but over the past two days I have managed to get the young plants out ans have given the garden a good thick mulch of bark chip to help retain moisture during the summer...if we get one this year....and in place of the thorough weeding that my injuries prevented me from accomplishing.

Another result of the accident has been that I am very much slower than usual and the chores are taking me much longer than usual, which has in turn left me little time for recreational writing, hence the stock footage as it were. I try to keep a story or two filed away in case of such emergencies as when I began to write my blog I promised myself that I would never miss a day.

I hope you enjoyed the spooky tales from my childhood years, you need not believe them if you prefer not to, they are a little far fetched I know.

Back to the present , my son finishes his last night at work before retreating to Derbyshire for a week to rest I hope and also to get on with his new book. He could not have chosen a more beautiful place that Castleton to spend his time, it has some spectacular scenery and lots of caves to explore if the weather is bad. I have done the walk from Mam Tor to Win Hill in all weathers and once flew a kite from the top of the Tor in a gale. Lord how the kite line screamed as it reeled out ,it was a wonderful day.
I shall miss my lovely lad but on the plus side Pa and I intent to eat all the things we love but never eat because my son dislikes them. Such delicacies as steak and kidney pudding, lots of fish dishes and NO CHICKEN !

I shall of course kill the fatted calf on his return, laden with dirty laundry, it will be worth it to have him home again.
Now I am off to have a bath to sooth my aches and pains, I shall put in some Epsom salts which are very soothing and make the water silky soft. After that it will be cookies and a glass of milk and hopefully a good nights sleep. H If not there is always the cat for comp[any and a film or two so good night to you all, sweet dreams.

GROWING UP WITH GHOSTS : PART FIVE

For those of us who lived on our haunted farm the everyday occurrences cause very small ripples upon the pond of family life. Things tended to become much more interesting when we had guests to stay. I had two Aunts who between them spent almost the entire summer with us, I loved having them around when I was a child and spent most of my summer holidays in the company of one or the other of these ladies as I often shared a bedroom with them when they were visiting. One of these Aunts was of a nervous disposition and preferred not to have any dealings with the supernatural......lucky for some. She never saw a thing but she knew of the farms reputation and was always hearing bumps in the night or detecting cold spots on the stairs. During her stay she would become increasingly nervous and as she slept in my room I often witnessed her having a fit of the fan-tods.

One night as she sat combing her hair at the mirror the swore that someone was standing behind her, I assured her that there was no one behind her, quite truthfully because the nightly spectre was sitting as usual at the foot of my bed, unseen by Aunty thank the Lord!

One summer evening while she was staying with us my father, who loved a joke decided to play a prank on us all, He quietly donned a white sheet and slipped out into the garden, I saw him go out and decided that I would give him a fright and slunk out side with a sheet of my own. Unbeknown to me I was observed by my brother who thought that he would turn the tables on me and so out he went complete with sheet to try his luck.
It was getting quite dark and as I rounded the dairy I saw my father passing in front of the kitchen window , I crept up behind him stealthily and was about to try a ghastly moan when around the other corner another ghostly form appeared. Now I had only expected to see one other ghost, my brother had expected to see only one other ghost and my poor father had not expected to see any more ghosts at all. Each of us gave a shriek and ran as fast as possible. No one in the house had spotted us and so the only people who got a fright were the three of us, especially when mother saw the state of her white sheets.

Later that night we all woke to hear a violent hammering at the front door and my father went down to see what all the fuss was about. As he opened the door the knocking came again this time at the back door., and no sooner had my father reached the back door the knocking came again at the front. My mother shouted downstairs to let the ghosts alone and come to bed. Aunty fidgetted about all night and I got not a wink of sleep. We all agreed next morning that the ghosts definatly won that one.

On a much more serious note, our family has for as long as anyone can remember had a spirit who appears to one of us whenever there is to be a death in the family. “The Visitor” as we call him takes the form of a tall figure draped in black and no matter how dark the room is he is always blacker still. I first saw him when I was twenty three, he heralded the death of the Aunt of whom I have been speaking. This apparition always terrifies me, I must have seen him a dozen times and the effect is always the same. During the past couple of years I have not seen him because he now visits my poor son who hates him as much as I always did. He is a sort of inheritance and passes down the family preferring to seek out the younger members, he is never wrong.

As my home was so far off the beaten track it was decided, when I started courting Pa that we should stay at each others home on alternate weekends. This presented me with a problem, should we tell him about the ghosts and risk scaring him off, or causing him to think we were all lunatics ,or should I keep quiet and hope for the best. I was only sixteen and so head over heels that the thought of loosing my new found sweetheart could not be countenanced. In other words I wimped out and said never a word. The very first time he stayed over night he slept with my brother
who had been sworn, on pain of terrible retribution to say nothing of our peculiar problem.

Pa was tucked up in bed and my brother had gone to say goodnight to mum and dad when I heard a shriek from Pas room and he leapt down the stairs in a couple of bounds, all thirteen of them, gibbering about the strange things that seemed to be going on in his room. The game was up and we had to tell all. I am happy to say that I was forgiven and we are still together. Pa had the last laugh though, I stayed at his home on the following weekend and discovered that he had a ghost of his own. This gentle spirit was not half as scary as his dragon of a mother as I discovered to my cost!

GROWING UP WITH GHOSTS: PART FOUR

The area in which I grew up was steeped in history, quite a lot of which was of a martial nature. During the Crusades a large number of important prisoners, noblemen of Saladins army were held in the village until they could be ransomed as was the custom. Many of these were never released and instead were made to work on the land. During the Civil War my ancestors fought on opposite sides and finally the father was obliged to surrender his home to his sons Roundhead army. I should say what was left of it as the hall was destroyed by a mighty canon specially brought for the job. Its name was “Roaring Meg” and it is remembered still by the public house which takes its name.

Prisoners of war from France were also detained in the area during the Napoleonic wars, presumably because the place was so remote that they would find it difficult to escape.
All of these transients left echoes of their time in the village but the ghost I am going to tell you about today is of a time much closer to our own.

Each of the four villages had their own memorial to those who lost their lives in the First World War. Most of the villages had no more than seven or eight farms so when I tell you that on most of these memorials there were fifteen of more names you can begin to imagine the great loss these small hamlets suffered.
Our farm was an old one but like many others had been extended over the years, the latest addition being a large kitchen built on to the rear of the house. My father decided that we needed a porch over the kitchen door and during the work he discovered a medal carefully placed between two courses of stones. The medal was from the First World War and bore the name of a soldier, we shall call him Sapper J. Barker, his regiment was also mentioned. My father put the medal away and of course we forgot all about in for quire a long time until one evening he came home with quiet a story to tell. He had met a man at the local pub who was visiting the area, he had been told to speak to my father as his father had once lived in the house which was now our home. He asked if he could bring his father for a visit the next day and of course father agreed. The old man's name was Barker.

As soon as he arrived he commented on the changes to the kitchen and told us that he had helped to build the extension with his father many years before. He was quite overcome when we gave him back the medal that he has placed in to the wall for luck.
My father kept in touch with the old man and his son and they often visited us during the next few years. He told us how his younger brother had died in the trenches and of how close they had been . He had always looked out for his brother and had often carried him home after a night on the tiles. He had promised his mother that he would bring his little brother home safe from the war and always felt that he had let her down.

Some years later I was awakened one morning by voices and laughter coming from under my window. It was very early and dawn was just breaking, and I was non too pleased with the racket that was being made by two young men, obviously very drunk as they tried to climb the steps from the farm track to the house. This struck me as odd at once because these steps were never used as they were dangerous. I watched the two young men as they struggled to make headway up the steps, each time they staggered backwards they roared with laughter and as soon as they had picked themselves up they began again. At last they reached the top and stood for a moment, triumphant,suddenly they stopped laughing and clasped each other in an embrace and then with their arms across each others shoulders they walked slowly up the path to the house. As I watched them round the corner of the house I realised that their uniforms were like the ones in old photographs of my Grandfather, I felt suddenly as if I was standing under a cold shower. I went back to bed with my feet frozen and in spite of all I slept for another hour. I was awakened by
the telephone ringing in the hall. I heard my father answer the call and eager to tell him of my night visitors I rushed downstairs. As he replaced the receiver I blurted out my story, Dad went in to the kitchen to put the kettle on,he did not speak. I asked him what he thought and then remembering the telephone call asked him who was calling us so early.
The call was from John barkers son to tell us that the old man had passed away in the early hours of the morning.
I knew the time that he had died exactly because I suddenly realised who the two World War One soldiers were..
Sapper John Barker had brought his brother Sam home safe at last

GROWING UP WITH GHOSTS.:PART THREE

Not a great deal has happened today so instead of my normal blog I shall tell you another story about my haunted childhood home, I hope you do not mind and it will certainly be more interesting than a catalogue of today's mundane events.


Some of the ghosts who frequented my childhood home were very odd, I suppose all ghosts are but the funniest one was the ghost of a cat. Not a whole cat you understand but the tail end of one. It was seen by at least one member of the family on a daily basis and always whisking hurriedly through the door in to the kitchen. It was a tabby cat and you could tell it was a Tom cat if you see what I mean. Our poor dogs were driven to distraction by this interloper and many a visitor exclaimed in surprise when the half cat vanished in to thin air. My grandfather ,who saw the cat more often than anyone else held the theory that the animal had at some time been trapped in the door and met it's death, it's a possibility.

A much less amusing ghost was a very cross old woman who , though seldom seen made her presence felt by pushing you out of her way. She could be quite violent at times and once she pushed my younger brother down the stairs. Both my mother and I saw the whole thing. He was on his way upstairs and my mother and I were following, all at once he lurched backwards as if pushed and fell heavily against my mother who thank goodness was there to break his fall. My Grandmother was similarly pushed while going down stairs, she was not so lucky and broke her hip.
This bad tempered old girl also smashed crockery and once while we were all sitting at the dinner table a large bowl of rice pudding was lifted by an unseen hand off the dresser and hurled in to the fireplace. That was a conversation stopper believe me. One of my uncles and his new bride were visiting us for dinner and were aghast at what they saw. Now and again one of the dogs would yelp with pain and run for cover and when that happened we all knew the cantankerous old baggage was up to her tricks. I stopped her from hurting the dogs by hanging a pentacle around each of their necks, I did not see why they should suffer,my Gran asked why I did not give her one, I suppose she had a point.
The truth was that my Grandmother was just such another cantankerous old lady, and we children secretly called her Mugwump! Incidentally so did our Grandfather!

I would hate you to think that I was gung-ho about all these strange events. For a long time , several years in fact I was scared to death and the fact that my Mother and Grandmother who along with Grandfather lived with us on the farm ,were fond of discussing these happenings meant that I was never able to forget about our uninvited guests.
Whenever I was asked to write a story at school I always wrote a story about ghosts. My teacher, baffled by this strange predilection asked me one day why I always wrote such tales and how I managed to think them up. His face as I told him that the stories were true is a thing I shall never forget. Our school was a very strict C of E school and telling tall tales was more than frowned upon. Luckily for me the Head Teachers wife had psychic abilities and after a few words with my Mother the subject was dropped....at school. The Head Masters wife however paid us several visits to see and hear our cast of character ghosts, so then I had three of them discussing the doings of the supposedly dead past occupants of the house,. It was hardly an improvement!

One night when I was a out nine years old my Mother took me aside and told me that I had inherited the family ability to see ghosts, That I was like herself, my grand mother and many other members of my family psychic. She told me that I should not be afraid and that it was a sort of honour to be able to commune in this way. I felt that it was an honour I could certainly do without,but after that I was a member of the club. Around the fire with my Mother,my Grandmother and my Aunts my stories were listened to. I began to realise that these people were the only ones who I could talk to about my experiences, they knew I was telling the truth because they saw these things themselves.
I stopped being afraid from that day onwards and instead became curious about the strangers who shared our home.
This lead to many strange occurrences and much research as I grew older, but more about all that another time.

SUFFERING FOOLS

I am still in the process of trying to sort out with my local planning authority the mystery of the new hotel which is being advertised as due to open soon. The lovely old house, just across the lane from our cottage only had planning permission for a few alterations to be done before the supposed resident moves in. The advertisements on line clearly show the house and gardens as being open for conferences and functions. The planning departments answer to this is to tell me that I have confused the house with a large new hotel which opens shortly about a mile away . Either he has not read the advertisements or he has some other reason for trying to put me off the scent. I had half expected an evasive reply but I was not prepared for such a stupid one.
I have now written to the head of the planning department who had better come up with a less ridiculous and derisory explanation of I shall be obliged to go further . There has been far to much of this sort of thing in this area. Our friends at the other end of the lane are currently trying to have a noisy extractor fan and some very obtrusive lighting removed from a local hostelry who saw fit not to apply for planning permission before installing them. They have now applied to have these alterations passed retrospectively and the planning department seems willing to agree to this. The local conservation groups are up in arms but as is often the case money talks. I shall keep you posted, wish me luck.
Our next door neighbour was with us for coffee this morning and will join us for breakfast tomorrow which will be fun, I think I shall make a big batch of pancakes I am having a bit of a craze on them just now, and it will soon be Shrove Tuesday so it will be good practice.
I have done very little today as there have been ta number of distractions, not least of which is the fact that my internet access is on the blink again and has defied all my efforts to fix it. I hope that my clever son will work his magic again...fingers crossed.
It is half tern here and that means keeping an even sharper than normal eye open when out and about. Today I encountered a father and mother both on bicycles accompanied by three small children also on bicycles. The two youngest children were still at the trainer wheel stage and yet their idiotic parents allowed them to ride on the road. As I passed in my buggy the child bringing up the rear fell from her little bike and rolled into the road. The parents did not notice and continued on their merry way. I managed,God knows how to pull the poor little mite off the road as an overtaking vehicle headed straight for her. I doubt if he could have seen her as he pulled out past another car. To his credit when he saw what had happened he stopped at once and came to help me by chasing after her disappearing family. How can people be so stupid?

Her mother seemed more concerned about the state of the child's clothes than any thing else and the father just looked rebellious as the driver of the car gave him a lecture on road safety, it beggars belief.
I always looked forward to the school holidays when my son was a child ,nowadays I dread them, and it is not the children's fault, that lies with the parents who have no control and give their young no direction and even less of their time. Showering a child with expensive toys is not the answer. What children really want is the attention of their mother and father and I for one do not think this is too much to ask.

TROUBLE

It is all too true, troubles never do come singly, today they have raged through the house like express trains causing mayhem and creating problems for all concerned. Not least of my troubles was the fact that I could access the internet, this is still the case as I write so it is by no means certain that I shall be able to publish a blog tonight. still I shall press on .I suppose that it has not been too bad, just a succession of small aggravating little hiccups, the sort that cause delays and make everything take much longer than it should. It began this morning when my slippers disappeared again, it is the second time this week that this has happened. They vanished for the first time on Thursday and did not return until Saturday. Today they vanished again only this time I did not waste any time searching for the blessed things as I did that on Friday and Saturday only to have the turn up exactly where I had left them on Wednesday night. Since the other members of the household deny all knowledge of the matter and I do not believe the cat capable of dragging them off I can only conclude that either I am going dotty of the resident ghost has taken a fancy to them as she once did to a nice red scarf which vanished so often that I gave up on it completely.

Today was bread day and this does not usually give me any problems at all , today was different. In order to get five loaves in to the oven I have to use the right size tins and trays, this morning one of the flat trays was missing, I hunted all around and came up empty handed and so I was obliged to use a slightly larger tray. This caused one of the loaves to squash up on the side of another and the resulting loaf is rather Igoresque.

Next I took one of the loaves to a friend for who works at the garden centre, I decided to buy some plants while I was out and spent ages choosing some real beauties only to discover that I did not have my purse with me.
At various time during the course of the day my telephone rang, just twice and then silence. On the first occasion I called the number they had left only to have the person on the other end declare themselves as baffled as myself as to why I should have been called. Subsequently I did not bother to answer the telephone at all if it was I tone I did not recognise..

These are however minor irritations and to be truthful I have had worse days, I just wish that the Iron had done a vanishing act, but unfortunately it was all to visible and so I had not excuse for not ploughing my way through yet another mountain of wrinkled togs!

Hoorah! My internet connection is working again so I think I shall publish this load of old waffle while the going is good. I shall buy a new baking tray tomorrow and some plants too if I have the time. Keep safe and keep your eye on the ball, or someone might nick it!

TWAS THE DAY OF THE DUNGEONEER'S BIRTHDAY

Today one of the band of intrepid dungeoneers had his birthday party here at the cottage. They had as usual first spent the afternoon gaming in a deserted public house who's location seems to be a well kept secret as no one else ever goes there. My son is the dungeon master at present and gives no quarter I am told. Having killed thousands of daemons, finding treasure and locking each other up in dark oubliettes they had worked up quite an appetite for dinner.
It is the custom on these occasions for a very large amount of Chinese take away to be ordered and tonight was not exception. The poor fellow who delivered our order fairly staggered up the garden path. I had baked a large chocolate cake and also contributed a bottle of home made wild cherry vodka to get things off to a good start. A tradition at these parties is for every one to bring some outlandish beverage, the stranger the better. Once we had a bottle of brandy rescued from a Cornish shipwreck and last time a very expensive bottle of Scotch which to be frank tasted like fence paint mixed with horse lineament. It certainly put fur on my teeth when I tried a little!
Pa and I took our portion of food to a quiet place so as not to cramp the style of the revellers as they often remain in character at such times.
Judging by the noise they had a very good time and the cake vanished like a swamp mist in a fire storm. Our little cat who hates visitors retreated to my bedroom and hid under the bed until every one had safely left the premises. I have no idea why she is so afraid of this particular group as they are all really nice people who like cats. One of the group, a particular friend of long standing has in the past stayed at out cottage to look after our pets while we were away.
I had a good old baking session again this afternoon. This time it was a large batch of Ramshaw Rockies, A gorgeous chunky cookie full of walnuts , dates , peanut butter and this time I added some papaya for a change. I tried one while they were still warm....the cooks perk....and it was smashing. Quite a few of these will go with my son to work to share among his colleges, the rest will no doubt be eaten by Pa who loves them.

My neighbour popped round at lunch time with a dish of cauliflower cheese just ready to be finished under the grill. This dish is a speciality of his and is heaps better than my own recipe, he has a secret ingredient, he says. Whenever he makes the dish he always makes and extra dish for me, it is a real treat, and it tastes wonderful.

I managed to have a quiet time last evening and munched my way through a few naughty treats, I did enjoy it, and afterwards I slept like a log for four hours a record for me these days and I feel much better for it.

I do hope you had a good weekend stress free and happy and here's to a new week ahead, every day a new adventure, it certainly has been around here of late!

MUCH BAKING

The picture that featured in my first blog was,I believe that of a large chocolate cake, today I made another even more chocolatey cake. There is to be a party here tomorrow for a member of my sons gaming group, it is a tradition that the members celebrate their birthdays here and it is also the tradition that I bake a very large cake. Today's offering uses the same recipe as the first but the decoration is a little different. Apart from the usual chocolate truffle icing and various types of chocolate shavings and chocolate chips this one has shards of home made chocolate crisp around the side which gives it a rugged look, it is a cake more suitable for a man than many of my usual confections. The chocolate crisp is made by melting a large block of plain chocolate and then spreading it on to a slab of a board covered with cooking foil. When you have spread the chocolate evenly all you have to do is sprinkle it with some Demarera sugar and leave it to cool. Once cool it becomes brittle and you just break it into pointed shards and stick it on to the sides of your cake with a little of the icing. Any left over shards are very good with iced cream. This chocolate crisp can be flavoured with orange or peppermint. I used the plain version recently to decorate a cake with chocolate rum truffle icing, it went down well with the troops.

It took up a large part of the afternoon along with the two lemon drizzle cakes which I finally managed to make, they should have been done on Thursday but I was rather busy with other things that day. I managed to get most of the preparations made for a Mexican meal this evening so it all worked quite quite well.

The new collars which I ordered for my little cat arrived and she is now proudly sporting a beautiful green collar complete with crystals and a green bell to match. She seems pleased with it I am happy to say as she can be very fussy as far as collars are concerned. I actually ordered three different types just in case and also because I was spoiled for choice as there were so many nice ones to choose from.

I got a really bad fright this morning. I believe I have mentioned my musical budgerigar of whom I am extremely fond. This morning when I uncovered his cage he was crouched up a perch looking very seedy and did not respond to any of the usual blandishments, I really thought that something was wrong. On close inspection I discovered that he is loosing a wing feather and it had twisted round awkwardly and must have felt very uncomfortable to my poor Charlie Bird. With a Little help and a rousing Strauss waltz, a favourite piece he recovered his love of life and was soon bouncing about in time to the music and playing his tubular bells with all his usual vigour I almost cried with relief.


I am planning a quiet evening watching a film and have squirrelled away a few of my favourite treats to eat while I watch, these with a coffee and brandy will be my reward to myself for the hard work of the last few days.
Pa has been so much better for the last couple of days that I almost feel as if I am on holiday. He has been kind and helpful and fun to be with, his lovely old self in fact. I treasure days such as these as the are becoming rarer as the months pass.
I will not end tonight on a sad note though today has been a good day and for me for now at least all is well. I wish you all the same good fortune and a happy and relaxing weekend.

THE VILLAGE FIGHTS ON.

After yesterdays disclosures almost everyone is prepared to do battle with the marauding forces who are attacking our little village and threatening both the wildlife and our peace and quite.
This morning I received a rasher guarded e mail from our local planning department promising to look in to the matter and contact us with their findings as soon as possible. They only have to log on to the new hotel's web site to see what is going on but hey-ho who am I to criticise their methods?

Today has been quite busy but thankfully less so than yesterday. Just as well really as we were all pretty well shattered after yesterday's goings on. My son's guests enjoyed their evening and I believe many monsters were slain in the great battle which took place in the kitchen, there was also much hilarity and the consumption of crisps and cola was up to the usual average . My son, bless him tidied up last night so that I had a nice clean kitchen to bake bread in this morning. While the bread baked we had a breakfast of buttered crumpets toasted muffins and croissant with strawberry jam, after which, well stuffed we began the Friday chores which I must say we finished in record time.

We were just preparing to have dinner when a friend arrived to talk to us about the hotel. Apparently the broadcasting of information yesterday had really set the cat amongst the pigeons and we are now quite sure that we know who is really at the bottom of this. The question now is weather money will triumph over the law and public opinion as it usually does. We are determined to fight to the last to keep one of the last bits of rural London safe from the developers. It is as a neighbour said yesterday. Us ordinary folk have to get planning permission even for a satellite dish while the rich landowners can build hotels and even supermarkets on their land and get away with it. This type of thing makes a mockery of democracy, that much is certain.

I expect all of this might make you think that I am a militant rabble rouser but nothing is further from the truth. All I ask is a quiet life and to be left alone to live it.it does seem at time that what little we ordinary people have is under threat from those who already have too much and this is true the world over. You only have to look at what is happening in parts of the United States of America to see that even in the land of the free you need to be very brave to stand up to the vested interest of those in authority. I watched with disbelief a documentary about Detroit a few weeks ago. Mo town as it was know in my young days is now almost a ghost town with deserted streets and derelict factories. What happens to the folks who built that town and others like it. All the hard work and suffering and sacrifice of the ordinary people who made the city great. They have been sold down the river because of a greedy minority who always seem to come out smelling of roses.

Sorry about the rant but I feel the injustice of this type of thing very keenly. We must all look to ourselves and make our wishes known . It is time that the politicians remembered that they are the servants of the people and not vice versa. There is an old saying. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Perhaps these people should remember just who it is who is paying for them to sit in their fancy offices. Maybe it is long past time.

UNDER ATTACK AGAIN

Today was always going to be busy as we had guests for dinner tonight, had I realised just how busy I would not have slept a wink last night.
Across the road from our cottage is a beautiful large house which was until recently the home of a member of the House of Lords. The house was sold recently and we were led to believe that the massive renovations that have been taking place for the past five months were being done to make the place fit for a millionaires daughter and her son to live in.
As the work continued we all began to wonder about some of the new features being added to the house. Some how things just did not fit.,so this morning I decided to play Sherlock Holmes and began an investigation that led to some startling disclosures and which has the local community up in arms.
I will not bore you with all the details of my investigation but with a little luck and a lot of ferreting I discovered that the place is to be turned into an hotel complete with conference suit and with the extensive gardens to be used for functions such as weddings, to be held in a large marque on the lawn. The noise from such events will be deafening and then comes the question of where they will park as the lane is very narrow and even the people who live here have difficulty finding parking space at times.
We and all the other locals had seen the plans for the renovation of the house but nowhere on those plans was mention made of an hotel, Yet they are advertising on the internet on a number of sites as opening for business soon.
“That is against the law.! I hear you cry, well yes it is unless ,like the people who have bought the house you are a multimillionaire. Needless to say, the local town planning department have been informed and we await their reply with interest.

Finding and afterwards dealing with this information took a couple of hours but I would still have had plenty of time had not a further bombshell been delivered by the secretary of our conservation society. I had just begun my preparations for dinner which included the making of a lemon drizzle cake when the telephone rang and it was.”Did I know that a children's playground was to be built in the churchyard at the rear of our cottage.” The short answer to which was. “No.”
You may remember my mentioning past battles over the fate of this lovely old graveyard and there is an ongoing survey of the whole area as a wildlife habitat. This news came as a real shock, so I went back to the computer and wrote another batch of letters to the relevant people. This took ages and by the time I had finished I was running late. Any Idea I had of baking a cake was scouted and I got on with roasting the beef, preparing a huge batch of roast potatoes and vegetables. While the meat was cooking I hared off to the local shop for some iced cream, I hated to do it but needs must when the devil drives!
Dinner went well at least, the guests were on time and the food was well received, even the shame making iced cream.

I returned to my computer to discover that my mail box was heaving with correspondence most of which I intent to shelve until tomorrow.
What a week. I have people in my garden felling trees illegally, then the new hotel with no planning permission at the front of the cottage and a playground to be built at the rear. All I need now is to discover that my next door neighbour is to open a house of ill repute and we shall have as it were “The Full Monty.”
One thing that is explained by all of this however is the sudden need for a car park in this neck of the woods, and now we know why the trees had to go.
We are under siege and we are fighting , all of us. We are standing by to repel boarders, let us hope that for once might is not right.

A SCRUBBERS LOT !

Today I decided to rearrange the bathroom instead of just giving it the usual clean and it turned out to be one of those jobs that you wish you had never started. It did look a little untidy, mostly because no one ever puts anything away, so that the contents of the medicine drawer and the first aid drawer are all too frequently seen decorating the top of the cupboard or the windowsill. Add to this the casual way in which the men folk of the house casually toss used towels in a heap on the floor and you can picture the scene.

Armed to the teeth with cleaning cloths and various bottles of cleaning fluid, all claiming to cut the cleaning time in half (a likely story) I made my first assault on the mess by removing every thing from the bathroom,it was at this moment that I discovered that that some kind soul had in the not too distant past sat down in the bath with a bump and had caused a wash of water to soak in to a twelve pack of loo rolls rendering them useless and a trifle mouldy. They were dispatched to the dustbin at once.
With the room empty I gave the place a good clean and then began the business of putting all the cupboards ,drawers laundry baskets and chairs back in to place. Our bathroom is perhaps a little unusual in so far as it has a library for the edification of those using the facilities and so that the shinning hour may be improved by a gaining of knowledge. These books range from Jeremy Clark sons latest offering to books of humorous epitaphs and a book of choice insults in Latin, as you can see we have a wide range of interests. Murder mysteries and novels have been banned as they have in the past been the cause of traffic snarl ups on the landing when some one reaches an interesting bit and can not put the book down!

Having got the furniture out I was for a time unable to work out a new lay out for the room but with perseverance and a lot of cursing I eventually managed to create a new and hopefully easier to keep tidy lay out.

Unfortunately I had become so engrossed in the task that I completely forgot the time and when at last I received a plaintive enquire about dinner I realised that it was well past five and I had not even begun the preparations for the meal.
The next hour or so was a blur of cooking savoury mince and boiling potatoes,,carrots and parsnips and at last A large cottage pie topped with melted cheese and accompanied by a large jug of gravy was on the table ready for my poor hungry boys.

I must say that the food vanished in record time and after washing up I crawled up the stairs to my newly furbished bathroom and treated myself to a good long soak, much needed as I looked horribly dishevelled and soon the poor old scrubber was a clean as the bathroom.
And now my bed awaits me and my little cat Twiggy is impatient for her nightly cuddle so I will wish you a good night and pleasant dreams.

CRUSADER IN A LILAC DRESSING GOWN

I awoke this morning to the sound of chainsaws and the sound was much too close for comfort. An investigation revealed a pair of workers in the process of felling a lovely ash tree which grows at the bottom of my vegetable garden. Now we have known for some time that the owner of the land ,and indeed the cottage we live in was intending to apply for planning permission to build on this piece of ground. We have been prepared for the possible loss of the garden and orchard and have never disputed the owners right to apply for permission to build..
What we were not prepared for was his decision to fell the trees on the site in order to obtain that permission. You see his chances of being allowed to build will be much better if there are no trees on the site, this morning he attempted to make sure that there were none.
I quickly put on my dressing gown and a pair of Wellies and set off down the garden to remonstrate with the chainsaw gang, asking them if they had permission to fell the trees, they told me they had.....they lied.
As the law stands it is illegal to clear a site before planning permission is given ans when I pointed this out to them they became rather truculent but they did pack up and leave soon after. I returned to the house and immediately wrote to my landlord pointing out the error of his ways and then rang our local planning department to inform them of what had taken place.
If you are a regular reader of my blogs you will know that I am a member of a local group committed to the preservation of trees and wildlife habitat in our village and so the local council are already familiar with my activities. They were most interested in what I had to say and concluded, as I had that the trees were being felled so that when planning permission was applied for it could be said that there we no trees on then site thus making it much easier for permission to be gained.

I am expecting a visit from the land agent who acts for my landlord and I expect that he will be most seriously displeased. I suppose it could jeopardise our home and yet I can not sit idly by and watch the wanton destruction of these beautiful trees all for the sake of greed, my land lord is very seriously rich and does not need to behave in this way. The law Is the law as far as I am concerned and I will fight this no matter what.

I do wonder though what I must have looked like to those loggers this morning , flying down the orchard in my nightdress and dressing gown and with my long ,greying hair uncombed. I suspect that I must have resembled a harpie or one of the furies from a Greek tragedy. They certainly looked startled enough when I appeared. Pa and my son had a good laugh at me during breakfast.
I may not be very tall but a can be very scary when the occasion demands.

I have been given some beautiful raspberry canes today and I hope to plant them out soon ,raspberry jam is gorgeous and it will be good to have enough spare fruit to make some this year.

I do hope that if the men return that they do so a little later in the day, crusading in a dressing gown at this time of year and at my age is not my idea of fun.

Since writing my blog this afternoon I have received a call from the planning department to let me know that after a site visit by one of their officers they will be contacting my landlord requiring an explanation for his actions and instructing him that no further work is to be carried out without permission. Score one up to the dressing gowned crusader!

SIGNS OF SPRING

Tradition has it that St Valentines day is when birds choose their mates and today for the first time this year our Robin sang his spring song,which is much richer and less plaintive than his thin winter warble. There certainly seemed to be excitement in the air today among our feathered visitors
In the lane I noticed that the hawthorn leaves are bursting from the cases and are now showing small sprays of vivid green leaves. In a few days time when they have opened a little more I shall gather some to add to a salad along with a few young dandelion leaves also beginning to grow in small tufts under the hedge.
The willows at the rivers edge are showing the tell tale sign of brightness, the forerunner of the tender green leave soon to follow and the brush wood around the bole of the pollarded limes display fat red buds which will open at the first sign of real warmth.
The parakeets, of which we have a great multitude in this part of London are prospecting for nest holes in the trees at the side of the orchard and occasional fights break out when a pair try to steal a hole that has already been chosen. One of these nest hole is opposite my bedroom window and I have spent some time today watching their antics with great amusement

Knots of primrose leave cover the ground under the orchard trees now and will soon take the place of the crocus who's brave show has brightened the view from the kitchen windows for days .

All this is very hopeful and yet I can not help feeling that winter has not finished with us quite yet. Even so spring is on the march and all the bustle of that lovely season will soon be upon us.
Every year when autumn arrives I feel glad to clean my gardening tools and put them away, as I am by then tired out with all the harvesting, jam, pickle and wine making. Each year in January I feel that I shall not be able to work up the energy and enthusiasm to begin again all the sowing and planting out. As soon as the first fine day of February arrives I feel the customary excitement mounting within me and once again I cannot wait to begin. I have a bag of compost warming indoors so that the tiny seeds will germinate more quickly and I hope to have the tunnel ready in a day or two.
It is hard to resist the call of the garden on such a day as this, the joy I find in growing vegetables, fruit and flowers never fails to return to gladden the lengthening days and the rewards of the hard work are abundant all summer long.
We are still enjoying last summers strawberry crop every time we open a jar of jam and
I am still decorating trifles and pavlova's with last seasons wine berries stored carefully in the freezer along with French beans and raspberries.

I hope the day never dawns when I do not feel this sudden up rush of excitement when spring begins. It has been a part of my life for as long as I can recall and I take my place among the other busy creatures in the garden with a sense of thankfulness which grows greater with each passing year.
I may be less active and less able than in my younger days but in my heart the child, full of wonder at the beauty and magic of it all is still there.....somewhere inside me.

RETURN OF THE SPOTTED PERIL

The allegedly hibernating harlequin ladybirds currently roosting in the upstairs rooms have awakened again and are causing mayhem once more.
This morning I counted over a hundred in one room alone and I woke this morning to discoverer half a dozen of them in my hair and a further dozen or more in bed.
This type of ladybird, not native to the British Isles has a very unpleasant habit, when startled or threatened in any way it exudes a drop of smelly liquid, greeny yellow in colour which leaves a stain as well as a foul pong. This staining is almost impossible to remove and when the numbers of beasties are high the patches of stains are quite noticeable.
This morning they were stamping about in the bathroom on a pile of white towels, these and a white T shirt of my sons left out to air went straight back into the laundry basket.
Although these little menaces are harmful to our native species and a damn nuisance in to the bargain I have not the heart to hoover them up or evict them to face the cold winter and certain death.
My little cat however is not so forbearing as I. After attempting to have a nap in the windowsill and having spent a whole hour twitching with irritation at the attentions of these pests she suddenly jumped on to my bed and in doing so shed about a dozen assorted bugs on to the quilt. She then proceeded to bash away at them with her paws,until they were all over the floor...and back in my bed again.
Last night I removed an eggcup full from my sons room and moved them to the bathroom where there is ,hopefully a good chance that they will either drown in the bath of fall down the lavatory , one can but hope!
They infest every cupboard as a rule so this year I prepared a pungent herbal bouquet a little of which I tied up in muslin and put the in many of the drawers. This has been successful to a degree and I shall extend the trial this summer.
He ironing is done at last, it took hours, my own fault of course for letting it pile up.....never again!

I have a feeling that we may be getting some snow next week, certain meaningful twinges in the knees which usually auger very cold weather are afflicting me at the moment, I love snow so I do not mind at all...except for the twinges.

If tomorrow is the start of a working week for you good fortune attend you and if like us it is the start of a holiday week relax and enjoy it. For those who work with my son have as lazy a week as possible, from what I hear you have certainly earned it.

THE MACHINE STOPS

Well it finally happened , the entire computer system at my sons place of employment died last night. To be truthful the only wonder is that it did not happen sooner, the writing has been on the wall for over a year.
The hardware is pretty ancient and the constant bolting on of new software and increased capacity has been causing minor shut downs with alarming regularity. They are trying to run a sports car with a lawnmower engine and the people who have to use the system have been warning the powers that be of the folly of allowing the situation the worsen. for some considerable time..
The recently installed M. D had been on duty for almost thirty hours without a break. By the time my son left this morning. Hats off to the man, it is more than his predecessor would have done.

The truth is that past management decisions have been to say the least rather woolly minded and by the time a new Exec was brought in the damage was too far gone . The slash and burn attitude to staffing levels means that there is no back up for emergencies such as these.
My son arrived home late and did not go to bed until after twelve pm. This is catastrophic as he has to be up again at five to get ready for work.
His praise for his team is of the highest sort and his gratitude for their loyalty knows no bounds,they volunteered to stay behind to a man....and woman.
It is however my opinion that the company has been trading of this loyalty for far too long.
If I ran a business which was dependent on its vehicles I should be sure to keep them in good repair, and if they did break down I would not expect my drivers to deliver the goods to my customers by wheelbarrow, This is in effect what the workforce have been asked to do. It makes no sense to me but then who am I to question the wisdom of “The Top Brass” All I know is that if you do not keep your knives good and sharp the only things they will cut is your fingers.
I hope that this gets sorted soon for every ones sake as in this climate customers can be very unforgiving.
I gave my son an extra hour in bed and changed the dinner menu from cottage pie to home made beef and sun dried tomato burgers in an attempt to cheer him up a little. I I also tried a new way of cooking potatoes. I used a spiral cutter to make long curls of potato and then cooked them quickly in a little ground nut oil in a very hot oven, they were very good and tasted a little like chips but somewhat more crispy.
With yesterdays left over mashed potato I made three dozen potato cakes on the griddle,I used a heart shaped cutter and they will make a lovely breakfast for Valentines day when my son begins his week off. Perhaps with a rasher or two of crisp bacon and an egg.
I still have not tackled the blessed ironing yet but tomorrow I really must bite the bullet and get it done, I run the risk of being buried under a mountain of creased shirts every time I open the airing cupboard! We almost lost the cat this morning and she is still giving me looks of reproach when ever she see,s me.
On a different subject entirely, my hearty congratulations to the people of Egypt, especially the young ones who have risked so much to gain their countries freedom. Tyrants beware, who ever and where ever you are

COMMITEES vCOMMITMENTS

I should have attended a committee meeting of the local conservation society this morning at eleven o'clock, unfortunately the fates conspired against me in such a way as to make it impossible.
My son, who normally arrives home at about seven forty five was not in until well after nine and with much to talk about .His meeting with the head honcho coincided with a complete systems shut down . I had already started the process of getting Pa out of bed and the auspices were not good when after four attempts to wake him he was still snoring like a chainsaw.
While my son took a bath I tried gain and this time he woke from his comatose state declaring that he had not had a wink of sleep all night...........history had better not record my response to this statement!
By ten thirty he was out of bed and I received a call from our secretary during which I broke the news that I would be absent from the assembly. I also mentioned in passing that I was rather fed up about the fact that our chairman is incommunicado for most of the time. He does not answer his phone, he does not answer messages and in spite if the fact that he has a computer declares that he is “not techy” and can not be asked to use his e mail .
This poses problems for us all and it seems to me that the only time we have a chairman at all is during committee meetings when apart from occasional meaningful looks at his young wife he does not seem to contribute much other than to make up the numbers. I should have liked to put this to him at the meeting but perhaps it was as well that I did not. You may be able to tell from the tenor of this blog that I am , shall we say less than pleased with his performance.
The secretary and myself both have invalids to care for and she also has a full time job yet we manage most of our commitments, in fact today is the first time I have let them down .

Enough of this frippery. I finally go Pa to the breakfast table and our neighbour joined us which was fun and Pa woke up at once and even had a goon a new type of computer which our neighbour brought with him. On of those sort that have no key board, I think Pa fell in love with it and I expect he will want one of those now.

I baked bread this morning and while we talked I prepared the vegetables for tonight's dinner of sausages, mashed potato and onion sauce with carrots ,parsnips and swede. I dashed out to the cash point and them picked up a few supplies , fresh fruit and sarsaparilla and some clotted cream.
I was so late back that I had no time to do the ironing and as you can imagine I was deeply grieved about that.
I do not know where the time has gone today ,I seem to have been moving very fast and achieving very little, we all have days like that from time to time. Are we down hearted, not at all. The ironing is going no where and at least all is well with my son ,even P a looks brighter now than I have seen him in ages. All is well, my snug bed awaits me and my little cat is anxious to have her tummy tickled, my last commitment, and a very pleasant one before I turn in for the night. Heres to tomorrow, may it have more hours in it than today !

HAPPINESS IS A HOT COOKIE

What a rainy day it has been,my little cat has spent much of the day curled up on one comfy chair of another and finally settled down for a long nap on my desk curled up around the lava lamp.
I decided to spend a day in the kitchen and to begin with cooked a full English breakfast for Pa and myself. I love the taste of bacon fried on a griddle so I did lots and we had two eggs each and fried tomatoes too, and we took our time over our meal before getting on with the days chores.
I usually bake cookies on a Friday but as it was such a soggy sort of day I decided to do them today. I made eighty cookies, all of them butter short cakes, some decorated with cherries and some with walnuts for a change. As the batches came out of we oven we had some with hot milky coffee, there is nothing quite so nice as a hot cookie fresh from the oven and still a little soft.

While the cookies were baking I made a meat sauce and a white sauce for tonight's lasagne,requested by my son. He has to leave early tonight as he has a meeting to attend so I am glad to have something quick and tasty on the menu for tonight.

From the kitchen widow I can see the bird feeders and they have been even busier than usual today in spite of, or perhaps because of the rain. The poor old parakeets looked very wet indeed as they raided the peanut feeders. Each day we put out an apple for the parakeets and today was no exception. Today however a cheeky squirrel decided to make off with the apple right under the noses of the parakeets, a chase ensued that was worthy of a silent film as they attempted to head the squirrel off before it disappeared with the fruit. The noise was deafening for a few minutes but at last the squirrel made it over the fence and the birds gave up the chase.
Our tame blackbird came as usual for his sultanas and the blue tits were as busy as every helping themselves to suet and bread crumbs all day long.
I went out briefly this afternoon to buy a valentine card for Pa, I bought a gift for him last week, it is a beautiful magnifying glass in wooden case, he has a small one at the moment and this one is much bigger, a real Sherlock Holmes one, I hope he will like it.
The lane just below the house was flooding as I came home and all the trees were hung with shinning droplets of water. A car passed me in the lane and sent up a spray of water which soaked me to the skin, he was so busy laughing that he did nit see the van turning out of a side road, I felt sorry for the van driver. I suppose it is a case of what goes round comes round, rough justice. To be truthful I was already pretty well soaked so it did not matter much.
As soon as I was dried out and had changed my clothes I made a hot drink and sat for a while in my warm kitchen, it was almost worth the wetting to feel so comfortable and warm afterwards.

A friend of my sons is holding his birthday party here next week and I shall be making a large chocolate cake for the occasion. The picture on my very first blog is of a chocolate cake made for the birthday party of another friend of my sons so I shall have to have a look at it to make sure that this one is different. Maybe I shall make a chocolate fudge cake this time, my mother used to make this cake for me on my birthday when I was a child and it is my favourite cake still.
I shall also be making a cake for Valentines day, a heart shaped one filled with strawberry jam and cream, its no wonder I am putting on weight.

I am off now for a long soak in a nice hot bath so goodnight everyone , keep snug and keep safe.

NOISES IN THE NIGHT

We were fortunate last night as the aeroplanes with often thunder overhead on their way to Heathrow were using another flightpath and when I turned in for the night all was quiet,but not for long!
Shortly after midnight a Little Owl which roosts on a tree at the side of the house decided to engage in a hooting contest with another of its kind who resides in a large cedar in the old graveyard behind our house. These little birds, the smallest of the British owl species have a very loud hoot and further more at the end of each hoot they emit a loud blood-curdling screech. For over an hour I have the full benefit of their choral practice as one of the trees is but a few feet from my bedroom window and the other no more than twenty feet away. I did not mind too much as I never sleep well at the best of times but by one O clock I was feeling drowsy and was glad when one of the protagonists gave up and flapped off in to the darkness.
I cuddled down into the bed covers and sighed with relief, too soon as it turned out for five minutes later just as I had finally nodded of an ear splitting shriek came from the front garden flowed by a cacophony of barks and growls.....foxes!

I got up at once and looked out of the window, there on the front lawn were a pair of dog foxes engaged in a mighty skirmish presumably over the female who stood a little to one side and paying scant attention to the battle which raged before her. The y rolled about in the borders demolishing along the way a young rosemary bush and knocking over a number of flowerpots. Fifteen minutes later the battle still raged and I noticed that lights were on in the house across the road and I could hear activity in the house next door.
The female,bored to death by the whole thing got up and walked off through the gate and across the road and still the two males fought. I had thought that by now the foxes had already paired but these boys seem to have left things a little late.
Just as I was about to give up and make a cup of tea our resident dog fox, a fine big hansom fellow strolled down the garden path and in a few seconds and with very little resistance saw off the interlopers, chasing them off the premises and down the lane.

Thankfully I returned to bed rather chilly and by now very sleepy. My luck was out again! As I drifted off to sleep a thought I could hear singing...surely not, it was almost two in the morning. Unfortunately I was not imagining things, the singing got louder and louder until I could make out the rather rude song being tortured to death by a pair of drunks on their way home from a pub lock in. They passed the bottom of the garden and suddenly stopped in mid carouse,for a moment their was silence and them the unmistakable sound of a punch up. This proved too much for my neighbours and as I discovered this morning the police were called, so now we had sirens howling down the lane,followed by an ambulance, Oh help!

At last the lane was empty, the garden was quiet again and at three thirty I climbed wearily into bed again, curled up and went straight to sleep. Fifteen minutes later a large cargo plane screamed overhead, the noise made louder by the fact that I had forgotten to close the window after fox watching, so I got out of bed again and closed the window tight shut.
I slept at last. At seven thirty my son arrived home,he woke me......bless him with a cup of coffee.
The sounds of night creatures going about their lawful occasions I can cope with, as for the rest I am philosophical. I am told that I am going deaf, a hereditary problem, after last night I begin to think it might not be so bad after all......I jest of course.

WINTER BLUES

How beautiful the weather has been today,from the first finger of bright sunshine that sent a beam of golden light through a chink in my curtains to the last glowing fire of the sunset among the trees.
I opened the curtains to meet a sharp frost,glistening with the magic of a thousand sunbeams silvering the fields and the railings at the bottom of the garden. The frost could not compete with the sun and as it melted away the fields were draped with a rising mist out of which flocks of geese rose into the sky. The river too held a cover of mist and resembled for a time a bathtub full of very hot water, then as quickly as it had come it faded away in the warmth of the advancing morning.
The sky was the true beauty of the day, as blue as forget-me-nots and not a cloud in sight,clear scintillating blue to lift the spirits and encourage the heart. All day the birds sang in the orchard, the blackbird has a lady friend and the robins are going about in pairs, on a day like this I feel that all gloom is chased away after the dark gloomy days of January.
In the orchard a carpet of crocus opened their pretty petals as the sun slid around the side of the house, their bold yellow stamens attracting the odd very early bee that disappeared as soon as the sun dipped over the old orchard wall.. Their are so many crocus that the top of the orchard under the damson tree is a carpet of purple and blue, yet as the sun moves away they close up so tightly that the seem to disappear. Under the apple tree the sharp spears of bluebell leaves are a promise of yet another carpet of blue in a few weeks time. This year I am rather behind with my gardening and the vegetable plot has yet to be dug but today nothing could spoil my pleasure in contemplating all the glories to come.
I know that there will almost certainly be more bad weather before the real spring arrives ,still a day such as this is a reminder that winter must end and that nothing can stop the change of season for long.
The cat Twiggy has been out and about all day. She has climbed every tree in the orchard and has , for the first time this year spent an hour in her own little tree house.....she has two.....at this time of year they catch all the sun and in summertime when the leaves are fully out she loves the shade in the afternoon.
Soon I shall start on the garden, the bark chip for the front garden arrived yesterday and I have purchased some new seed propagators at the bargain price of three for five pounds. These will be used to start the pumpkins and squashes, the cucumbers and tomatoes and I shall have to start them soon. Today I just enjoyed the view, this is a very odd little village, you would never believe that the heart of London was just a few miles away. The view from the window as I write is of trees and fields and I am grateful that this is so. I am a country bumpkin at heart and cannot survive in an urban environment,I feel caged, stifled and very miserable if all I can see are houses. The river is about twenty yards away and teeming with water birds. I watched a cormorant diving for fish recently,he caught seven small fish in half an hour, while a heron further up the riverbank caught nothing at all. I love it here although I do miss the quiet of real countryside and the darkness at night, in London it is never dark.

I hope to be able to visit my mother soon, I heard today that I can get respite care, just for a few days, I have not been home for over four years because my husband cannot travel and I cannot leave him behind. I am so excited,I telephoned my mother to tell her and we both cried, she is eighty six now and I want to see her so much .I knew today would be a good day as soon as I saw the sun., perhaps with a little help things will improve for us. It is good to have hope.on this wonderful blue and golden day.

GROWING UP WITH GHOSTS :PART TWO

One of the other spectral residents of my childhood home was a rather pretty young woman who, although she appeared from time to time more often made her presence felt by her heart-rending sighs and an icy chill. These manifestations were restricted to the scullery, formerly the old dairy and the pantry which had ,in the past been part of the dairy and was filled with low stone shelves for settling the cream. We felt that it was therefore safe to assume that she was a former dairy maid, perhaps one who had been crossed in love.

I discovered the truth about our sorrowful little ghost quite by chance during a conversation with an old gentleman who's family had lived in the village from back as far as the Conqueror.
I was siting at a crossroads about a mile away from my house and he approached me as I sat resting before walking up the last hill before home. “Jenny won't mind you keeping her company.” He remarked with a smile, and of course I asked “Who's Jenny.”
Jenny was indeed a dairy maid who had been employed by the hall to look after the dairy. She and her family lived in the farm house and her father was a cowman on the estate. She was sixteen when she fell in love with a lad from the next village and they started to walk our together. All went well until the young man decided that he preferred the charms the daughter of a farmer several miles away. He had met her on market day and when he discovered that she was not only pretty but she was an only child and so sole heiress to her fathers large farm. I suppose the temptation was great in those hard times and my poor little dairy maid never stood a chance.
She pleaded with her faithless suitor but in vain ,and a few weeks later she watched them celebrate their engagement at the May Fair.
Jenny went home quietly by herself and while the house was empty hung herself from a huge beam in the old dairy.
Her father found her when he returned from the fields that night ,his heart was broken as she was his only daughter and had been the mainstay of the family, caring for her little brother after the mothers death in childbirth. It was only when they were preparing her for burial that they village women discovered her secret, she was to bare the child of the boy she had loved.
The church refused permission for her to be buried in consecrated ground and so the poor father buried her at the crossroads, knowing as he did so that the young man would have to pass her grave many times in years to come and would be forced to remember the consequence of his faithlessness.

The father need not have worried, The girl Ted married was a shrew of the first water and made his life a misery for the rest of his life. The farm did not prosper and he died aged only thirty caught in a severe blizzard.
No one in our house was afraid of little Jenny when she sighed out her sorrow, but on the few occasions that she allowed herself to be seem some catastrophe always befell soon afterwards. The last time I saw her a small child from a neighbouring farm was killed by a milk wagon a few days later. Poor Jenny,I put flowers on her pathetic little grave every year on fair day until I moved away for good.

Next time I have a mystery and a bad tempered ghost to tell about.

COUNCIL VANDALS DESTROY WILDLIFE

Now that makes a lovely headline for a newspaper don't you think. Unfortunately it is all too true,. Our local council is once again cutting down healthy trees because some prize idiot has complained about the nuisance cased by fallen leaves. Health and safety has gone so far that in this borough it is considered unsafe for children to kick through fallen leaves and so the parks departments answer is to cut the trees down. In the past few months four trees have been felled in one park alone for this ridiculous reason, and in spite of the fact that the department in question promised to fell no more trees without proper consultation.

I have also been receiving reports of ivy being stripped from walls in another local park, again in spite of local opinion. So at the crack of dawn this morning I sat at my computer and composed yet another scathing letter to the head of the parks department asking her if it was the intention of the Local Authority to tidy up every tree, shrub and vestige of wild life in the borough into oblivion! We are in danger of becoming a totally sterile environment because some idiot is afraid of being sued if someone slips on a few dead leaves,or a child falls while climbing up an ivy covered wall.

The mind boggles at such a ridiculous situation, at a time when Britain's trees are under attack from one of the worst infestations for years. Truly the new virus make the Dutch Elm outbreak back in the 70,s look pretty tame. That outbreak caused the loss of almost every Elm tree in the British Isles, the new plague strikes at every species of tree and is spreading fast. I understand that in some areas thousands of healthy trees are being felled in order to provide a break so wide that the disease cannot jump the gap. I can only begin to comprehend the devastation this necessary measure will cause on many levels and its success is by no means assured.

I beg anyone who reads this to look around the place they live in and if they see such things happening in their area to please write to their local council ,if we all shout loudly enough they must hear us eventually.
Sorry about the lecture folks, I get rather steamed up on this subject and have bored you all half to death more than once I know!

Sunday has been quiet here but pleasant . I had hoped to do a little gardening over the weekend but the wind is too fierce for my taste and so after a little jaunt to the garden centre to return some moth eaten peanuts I decided to spend the day being very lazy indeed. My little cat and I ensconced ourselves in a cosy chair and I ate lots of toffee popcorn while she slept, only waking occasionally to demand that I tickle her tummy. There is something infinitely relaxing about stroking a cat and her purring has a soporific effect, I actually nodded off myself for a while.

I have put a vase of daffodils in my room, they are so brave looking and bright at this time of year and they look lovely in the jug that my sons friends at work gave me as a Christmas gift.
Tomorrow it is back to work for my son and the merry-go-round will start again for me too, but that is what life is all about I suppose and besides, the crocuses are opening up in the orchard, which means that the primroses will not be far behind. I also note that the evenings are getting lighter in spite of the dull sky and lack of sun. As my son says very often “Always look on the bright side of life.” I say it myself, but often with a hint of irony, the cause of which is ,I expect the result of age and experience ,yet I would say that I am still an optimist.........most of the time!

GROWING UP WITH GHOSTS : PART ONE

I may have mentioned already that I grew up in a very haunted house. It had been part of a large estate but the owner, tired of losing his tenants after a few months, even days on occasion decided to sell it together with a parcel of land. My parents bought the house in1958, I was four years old at the time and my baby brother was due to arrive in a few months.
It was a lovely old stone house with walls three feet thick to withstand the moorland gales.and was surrounded by a small woodland of beech and sycamore trees know locally as the spinney. It has good out buildings and thee view from all the rooms was spectacular. It was my fathers intention the have a poultry farm of his own, all free range and he would also sell geese, ducks ,chickens and turkeys for the table.

The first night was dreadful to me, the house was large and dark and there were no electric lights,add to this the fact that we arrived at night and you can imagine that I was not a happy little girl. I slept in a huge room, empty except for a little bed, I had never slept in a room on my own before, and the spiders, oh God , the spiders, I hate them still.

On the first morning a local farmers wife appeared at the back door with four bottles of fresh milk. She told us that she would supply our needs as far as dairy produce was concerned as we were not keeping any cows. I stood beside my mother half hidden behind her and a little shy. The woman asked if we knew anything about the house,and then proceeded to gleefully regale us with several gory tales of suicide and murder and ended by saying that no local person would set foot on the property after dark as the place was haunted, and that no one had ever managed to stay more that a few months. People had even given up their job at the hall rather than put up with the houses other residents!

Now my mother was an avid ghost hunter and the farmers wife was greatly chagrined by the blithe reception given by my mother to the ghastly news. She and my grandmother talked of nothing else all day.
That night I received what was to be the first of many nightly visits from the murder victim, she came every night until I left the farm at nineteen to be married. I knew she was coming, I could hear her tread on the stairs, she walked quietly into my room and sat at the foot of my bed. She did not speak,she never spoke to me,only to my mother and then only once although we all saw her. She looked so sad but kind, I was frightened of course and yelled for my mother at the top of my voice. Unfortunately the house was so large that she could not hear me when she was down stairs. Eventually the lady stood up and walked across the room and out of the door. This ritual went on for so long that I became unable to go to sleep until she had been to see me each night.

The story, and it is a true one was recorded in the newspapers at the time . It told of a brother and sister who had been left a large sum of money each. The lady worked at the hall as s seamstress and lived in our house. The brother, a ner'do well having gambled away his fortune appeared late one night and begged his sister to give him some cash. Having already settled his debts several times she refused and in a fit of rage he chased her through the house with a poker and bludgeoned her to death on the stairs. He fled in to the night but he had been seen by a local herdsman and the moment the body was discovered the hue and cry began. My grandfather remembered the case from his boy hood but had not associated it with our farm.

The brother was caught, confessed and was hung soon after.. We were told later that the stairs had been replaced but when my curios mama took up the stair carpet to look she found some very sinister stains on the wood work, she was delighted!
Thankfully the brother seldom appeared. He was seen occasionally looking in through the parlour window, he looked bedraggled and frankly not that scary , it was the way he faded into nothing that I disliked!
When I grew up I researched the story by contacting the county archivist and looking up ancient back numbers of the local news papers, I recognised both brother and sister from their photographs and the house too. I do not ask you to believe my story, it is rather odd though, don't you think.

These two apparitions were just the beginning,next time I have a dull day we shall have another chapter.