Category: Personal

Today I want to write! We’ve been  so busy recentlythat some things, like writing have had to be abandoned. We’ve been house-hunting and it is not only time consuming, it is frustrating, expensive (because we’re looking for a house in another part of the country), and fast becoming an obsession. We think, talk and dream about finding the “perfect” house – even though I know Kirstie Allsop (Location, Location, Location) insists it doesn’t exist and would have a real go at me for being so picky. Almost all my time on the internet is spent looking for houses and I’m sadly neglecting reading blogs as well as writing my own.

We’ve looked at all sorts of properties,( some in person and some online):

• New builds
• Bungalows
• Converted mill buildings
• Converted castle buildings
• Mews houses in town
• Isolated country cottages
• Houses on busy main roads
• Converted bank buildings –

We’ve viewed properties with fishing rights – next to rivers and a lake. How about this for a view?

Or this?

We’ve wondered what it would be like living without any or no near neighbours, with beautiful views in places where you have to go miles just to post a letter or buy milk. We’ve considered whether we could live in a town surrounded by other people or on a main road with all the noise and hassle of traffic roaring by.

We had almost decided on one house, which had a room we could use as a library, but the location wasn’t quite right and then it was sold to someone else. So it was back to scouring the internet – so many houses look beautiful until you see where they are or the locations look fantastic but the houses need too much work, or are too small, too big or too expensive. We’ve looked at the Borders and the north-west around Carlisle. Next up we’re visiting the north-east coast, hoping to find a house near the sea, not too far from civilisation, with room for all our  books, away from a busy road, not overlooked, and a smallish garden with a lovely view. Or am I asking too much? I would like a walled garden too, but that is expecting far too much I know.

I have been reading amidst all this the house- hunting. I’ve finished reading The Riddle of the River by Catherine Shaw and The Brading Collection by Patricia Wentworth and right now I’ve nearly finished Pardonable Lies (a Maisie Dobbs mystery) by Jacqueline Winspear. At a motorway service station I bought The Private Patient by P D James and Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig (Buy 1 Get 1 Half Price) and today I borrowed six books from the library (I was getting withdrawal symptoms). I think I’ll write about those tomorrow.

I have several posts I want to write – about our visits to Kew Gardens, to the Courtauld Art Gallery in London, and to the site of the Battle of Flodden at Flodden Field near Branxton in Northumberland, not to mention writing about books.

gone house-hunting

When I was little I loved looking through my father’s collection of cigarette and trade cards and I collected the cards out of tea packets. Recently I came across an old box containing these cards and have now spent a nostalgic time looking through them again. There are all sorts of sets including those produced by W D & H O Wills, John Player and Brooke Bond Tea to name but a few.

Here are a few examples:

Stanley Matthews, who was born in 1915,  played for Stoke City, was a schoolboy international and also played for England. I’m not sure of the date of this card but it only refers to him playing in the 1934-35 season against both Wales and Italy and the photograph is obviously of him as a very young man. He went on to become one of the greatest English footballers, playing until he was 50! He was knighted in  1965.

The card is no.28 out of 50 in the W D & H O Wills (cigarette manufacturers) series of Association Footballers. You could get an album to stick them in from tobacconists at one penny each.

I think this Weather-Vane is fantastic and would love to have one. Another old W D & H O Wills card, in the Household Hints series the instructions for making it are on the reverse and you need a T-piece and three pieces of iron gas-piping , a steel rod, stout wire to make the letters and sheet metal for making the cat and mouse.