The sitting room is almost done!

Some of you may remember that we got caught in the floods of July, not as bad as the poor people in Gloucester and Hull, but all the same it was bad enough to warrant our insurance company assessor proposing that the walls of sitting room needed replastering and then redecorating as well as having the flooring replaced.

It has been a long drawn out process, of drying out and repairs. So it has been absolute chaos here, with all the furniture from sitting room having to be piled up in the dining room and in bedrooms and eventually had to put the sofas and dresser in the workshop to get the floor done. The only room downstairs that has kept functioning properly is the kitchen, and a very small space around my desk in the dining room so I can still work and get on the computer.

The replastering commenced on 9 October , but we got of to a bad start as when he removed one huge patch of plaster he discovered it was filled totally with gunk that absorbed water and the wall underneath was soaked, apparently a "cowboy" job had been done just to patch up that area. So we then had to let that all dry, Stan brought his diesel Space heater in and for 2 days we lived as in a sauna whilst the wall dried out! The plasterer came back and did all the plastering and he calculated he would be back to paint on the on the Monday, but when monday came the plaster wasn't dry enough, so away he went leaving me to ring him when it was dry.

Well, I thought it was pretty dry by the Thursday so rang him, but he couldn't make it till the Monday of the next week, and we were going away for half term break, so it was left again until we came back. On our return I phoned him and he agreed to come on Friday.

But Friday came and he didn't..............his child was ill and he was needed to look after her. So we agreed Monday29 Oct.

At LAST on Monday he came and did the painting, he was rather shocked at my choice of colour, I choose "Roasted Red" paint which is a stunning rich red and I so desperately wanted to make the room feel warmer and cosier. The girls all agreed with my choice, but Stan was horrified. But as I pointed out he had forgone his opportunity of an opinion as he had been very stupid, driving his lorry into the drive and broke the cesspit cover, sending the huge concrete block into the depths of the cesspit! He then proceeded to drop the tape measure down the cesspit too, when he was measuring up for a new lid! So I got my red paint. And actually i think it looks pretty good. What do you think?

Then comes the exciting bit the laying of our slate floor. Even before the flood Stan had got it into his head that he wanted a flagstone floor and I had been looking into costs and it seemed very expensive, but after the flood the insurance company agreed to give us the equivalent to the cost of a new carpet to get the flooring of our choice. The Insurance contractors quoted an exhortionate amount of money over £2000 above the cost of carpet, so we said no way and I went to my kind and friendly handy man in the village and asked him to quote, this turned out so much cheaper. I managed to buy the slate tiles on ebay for a very reasonable price and this last week HM & his mate have been here laying the flooring. Now HM is a gorgeous man and I can't help looking at him, he works in shorts and has lovely legs, tall, fit and trim with floppy blond hair . Yummy!!


He'll be back tomorrow to do the grouting and that will be the end of the job, but I am already preparing my list of little jobs that just need a handy man!!

Beth

Bewitched

Deer Hunting

I've been wanting to talk about this subject for some time but somehow I've stopped myself as I'm not totally sure how I feel about it, but maybe it will make a subject for discussion. I imagine you may have very strong views on the subject and I don't want to cause disharmony in the ranks.

I am surrounded by beautiful woodland and in the woods live many deer, I think they are Roe Deer, they are of average size and quite dark tan/red. I think they are beautiful and I feel a real pleasure seeing them as I walk through the meadow and wood with Beth each day. They do get in my garden and eat my plants, I caught sight of one in there yesterday morning, she quickly leaped over the fence and away into the wood again. What with rabbits and deer my poor plants suffer enornmously, but I love being surrounded by wild life.

The man who manages the wood, I'll call him Dick, is an avid hunter, I think he sees himself as a game keeper.
When we first moved in, he obviously didn't know us and we didn't know him and so he was cautious of letting me know of his activities.

One spring evening in the first year of living here, I heard a tremendously loud shot, not the ordinary rabbit shooting shots, but something deafening and eerrie. A short while after i was watching out of my bedroom window which looks down the road along the side of the wood, and I saw Dick in the hedge dragging something huge out of the wood into his truck, on closer inspection i could see it was a deer. I was shocked, I'd not seen this happen before.

Later that week I was walking through the wood and met Dick, he was very anxious to tell me that the deer he had shot was injured, it had been hit by a car , he told me. Reassured I told Stan this.

But as time went on and I got to know Dick well and realised that he did infact hunt the deer, no crime in it, he has permission from the wood owner and the deer are on his land.

But what I do find disconcerting, is his now blaze outlook on letting me see all that goes on. I walk through the wood regularly, there is a public footpath through it, and on many occasions Beth will start sniffing the air and gets excited, I will look and suddenly find a whole deer carcass hanging from a tree, drying I assume. First time I saw it I was horrified and couldn't get over it for ages, but the worst is the trophy heads. Dick hangs all the heads up in the wood.
This is most scarry and disconcerting, yesterday I walked into the wood and Beth immediately started sniffing the air, and looking up, I couldn't see anything to start with, but as I peered into the wood I saw this beautiful big deer head starring at me from a tree, it looked so proud and bright eyed but it was dead and just a head. How grotesque is that!

Whenever , I think about deers being hunted it always takes me back to being a little girl and watching "Bambi"for the first time and being so upset when Bambi's mother is shot.

I'm not totally anti hunting, I have a dog that catches and kills rabbits and pheasants, but it just upsets me to think about deer being hunted, because they are so beautiful. Incongruous I know.

What do you think??

A true ghost story

My Mother-in-law died in 1991 whilst on vacation in Australia, it was a terrible shock to us all as she was only 66 and had been in very good health.

My girls were 4 years old and 1 year old at the time of her death.

Grandma had abeen devoted to my eldest, Evie, and her and grandad used to look after the girls when i worked one day a week. It was the highlight of their week. Grandma was a tall, slim, elegant lady with short bobbed grey hair.

When grandad started planning the 3 month trip to Australia, Grandma wasn't keen to go. They had been out only 2 years earlier, but Grandad was on a mission. he had been born in Australia and wanted to know more of his early life. So they went, Grandma told me as she left that she still didn't want to go and leave us. That was the last time I saw her alive.

A few weeks later I was driving home from work and I suddenly felt very strange and this voice came into my head, the words I heard didn't make any sense. "It's alright, Don't be worried, I'll be with you".

I was confused, but put it to the back of my mind, till bed time, then I felt I must say something. Stan told me he had a sense of doom and gloom so I told him the starnge message I'd received in my head. He laughed of course.

But the next day the phone call came from Father -in -law in Australia saying that Grandma had been unwell, she'd gone to bed for a rest and when he went to see her, she had died in her sleep.

...................................................................................................................................................................

Fast forward to 1993

It's Christmas.

Grandad had spent the day with us, we had a had a lovely day. Evie and Sophie were now 6 & 3.

About 8.30pm Grandad left to go back to his home , the children got ready for bed.

Evie slept downstairs and Sophie was upstairs as we only had 2 bedrooms upstairs and Evie was determined she wouldn't share anymore with Sophie, so we had turned the dining room into a bedroom.

I settled Evie into her bed and went up to see how Sophie was getting on, Evie had barely been in her bed 5 minutes, when she screamed loudly and came rushing out of her room.

I stumbled down the stairs to see what the matter was, I thought spider, as she hates spiders, but when I asked her , she replied through tearful breathes, " There's a lady sitting on my bed!"

"Surely not "I said " What kind of lady?"

"A white lady " she said. I felt shivered go down my back.I hugged her and walked her into the bedroom, turning on the light and of course there was nothing there.

I asked her gently what the lady looked like-

"Sort of tall, with short white hair." Evie replied.

We all sat in the sitting room for a while, I was scared too, I really do think she had seen a ghost. She'd had no time to go to sleep, so it wasn't a dream.

Then I got it , It was Grandma, she had come to see Evie and wish her a Happy Christmas .

I told Evie it must have been grandma and she visibly relaxed, but she wouldn't sleep in the room that night, she came up with us.

The ghost lady never appeared again...................... But I'm sure it was Grandma, coming to check on us.

'Bout time too!

I thought it was about time I wrote something again, I've been so busy there has not been time, I've thought many thoughts and planned many blogs but none have reached the page.

But I'm here now, albeit briefly. What should i write about ? There are many strands that i could pick up but upper most in my mind is Camilla and the sadness that she has had to endure today by having her beloved Robbie put to sleep.

I do know exactly what she is going through as I'm sure many of us with pets do. I had to go through the very same process with my old dog Belle, gosh that must be 10 years ago now, but it is still very vivid in my mind.

Belle was our sable German Shepard, she was Stan's dog really, though over the years she realised who looked after her and who she could rely on to get a decent walk and be fed, not from Stan that's for sure!
She was quite a scarry dog, she wouldn't tolerate anyone new coming into her life after about the age of 3yrs, so we couldn't easily have new friends round unless we shut her away, but she loved all our old friends and seemed to have an astonishing memory for people, smells or sight I'm not sure, but she could not see someone for 3-4 yrs but the moment they walked through the dog she'd recognise them and get very excited.
But anyone new she would bark and bite which wasn't good.
She loved going to Norfolk, she loved going on the beaches and she knew when we were within 5 miles of my parents, she would stand up and start to get very excited , leaping about in the car.

We took her on the Broads as a pup, and she had never seen water before, she thought she could stand on it, she stepped off the boat and suddenly sank into the water!! here was alot of splashing whilst she struggled to find her feet, then she tried to swim and after a bit of splashing seemed to get the hang of it, but got herself caught on a branch at the side of the canal. It took all our strength to pull her back into the boat! We've still got the photos. The look on her face , so puzzled as to what had happened. But after that she loved swimming and would jump in at every opportunity.

She had a good life but became ill in her 11th year and it all went downhill after Lucy was born. My mum was staying to look after me and the children following the birth and one day the cat was in the conservatory and my mum closed the glass door, Belle didn't realise and charged across the room to chase the cat and knocked herself out on the glass door. She was never the same after that, she did something to her legs and kept falling over, she couldn't get up the stairs any more and she had constant bleeding from her lady parts. So we had to reach a decision with the vet to do the kindest thing for her, to have her put to sleep.

I'll never forget that day, the way she looked at me when I got the lead and lead her to the car, she went so calmly and easily, yet previous days she could barely walk out for a wee, it was like she knew it was for the best, she even got excited when we arrived at the vet's, no distress whatsoever. And when the time came, Stan and I sat with her on the floor of the vet's whilst he gave the injection and we just held her as she fell asleep. I cried buckets , just as Camilla has cried buckets today. Now I'm crying again...............Sorry ,

But now we have Beth, an even more beautiful dog and so much gentler and lovelier than belle, and some day in the future i'll have to go through this trauma again.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we fall in love with our pets so? I told myself i wouldn't do it again, but I have and this time it's even deeper than before, because Beth truly is my dog.

Lucy's Birthday

Lucy turned 11 on Thursday, and this year our new Head Teacher made a new school rule- a good one not a bad one!
Each child is allowed to wear their own clothes on their birthday, or if the birthday is at the weekend on the nearest school day.

So this caused much excitement for Lucy, but choosing what to wear was not so easy, she was up in her room for ages, picking clothes out of the wardrobe, trying on, discarding to the floor and trying again! In the end she went with a smock top and leggings and she looked lovely.

It's a nice rule as the Birthday Girl/Boy gets lots of positive attention throughout the day. When I went to collect lucy she was positively beaming, she had had such a fun day .

Her main present was a Karaoke Machine.....(getting it was a challenge, the first machine i brought home, which Lucy opened for her birthday was minus the CD , so i had to traipse back to Argos lugging the old one and get them to replace it and lugg it back again, not easy as quite big and heavy) .......HELP!! She hasn't stopped singing since she got it! She's in the bedroom just above me now and I can hear her warbling away! Actually she's not too bad! She aspires to be on X Factor in 4 years time I think!!

This evening Lucy is having a disco with her school friends to celebrate her birthday in style. So I've been frantically preparing food and getting organised. I 'm not really sure what to expect of a disco with 20 11 year olds, but the man running disco is ex police so he should be able to contain their excitement!!

I'll tell you how it goes next time I write.

Some of you will remember that we got flooded in the storms in July, well I was expecting the builders to come on Monday to start the replastering, but i received a call today saying they were running behind with the previous job and wouldn't be with us until Wednesday. Quite relieved really as it gives me longer to prepare the room, take the curtains down and move the furntiure etc. And I still haven't got the estimate for the floor tiling yet , but I'm assured it is being done . The room might be ready for Christmas!!