Drapes

The dining room curtains that I collected last week have been draped over the dining room table and chairs since I got them home. They are now draped around the windows after I spent the afternoon gathering them up, putting in hooks and hanging them from their poles. It took all afternoon but I managed to get them right first time. It's amazing where the time goes to. Anyway after three years and four months in the cottage we now have matching curtains in the dining room and snug. Slowly we are getting there.

Quaker meeting

Last night we went to a social evening in the village hall, which was mainly put on for the benefit of the Quakers, who have been camping in a field in the village for the last month. Apparently there have been three camps of ten days. I am amazed that anybody is prepared to camp for that length of time in a wet Cheshire field without proper toilet and washing facilities. The Quakers that we spoke to were in the main young and seemed to accept a cold wet camp as part of life or their religion. Some were dressed for the beach while other looked as if they were dressed for an expedition to the North Pole. We didn't manage to establish what they had been doing to occupy themselves in our village, which has neither a pub or a shop, other than playing Quaker games and maybe sending a post card home via the post box in the centre of the village or phoning home from the telephone box which surprisingly hasn't been vandalised. This is the gun slinging, knife wielding wild north west where eleven year olds are shot returning home from football practice and family men are attacked defending their homes. So how long before the telephone box is vandalised and will the Quakers return next year?

Service with a smile

This morning I went to the nearby market town to collect the dining room curtains. As I walked from the car park to the shop I was thinking this is quite a walk - I hope the curtains aren't going to be too heavy. The curtains turned out to be not only too heavy for me to carry but also too cumbersome, so the nice man in the shop gave me the option of moving my car to a side passage near the shop or he would carry the curtains to my car for me. I went for the latter option - it seemed easier than trying to negotiate my way through streets that I don't know very well. He was very nice about it and admitted that I could not have parked the car any further away as we walked to the furthest corner of the car park. He told me about his trip to London the previous day and how awful the weather had been in London. That made a change as we had good weather yesterday.

Trellis by twilight

The trellis, that we have been waiting months to have put up, has a last started to see the light of day or rather the dark of night, as a start was made on assembling it in the twilight this evening. First the side gate, which took five weeks to make, was installed then one side of the trellis was put up. The chap that did the work this evening left about 9 pm and will return when the rose arch that we have decided to add to the trellis, has arrived.

Mission not accomplished

This afternoon I went into Chester on a mission to buy a birthday present for my husband and to change my mobile phone. For about two years now I have been using one of my husband's second hand cast off mobile phones. I managed to sort out his present. Socks weren't an option - he had recently bought himself some.

The mobile phone didn't get changed. The Orange shop was hot and busy. My fault for trying to change my mobile phone on a friday afternoon in the middle of August. So I'll exist with the second hand cast off for a bit longer.

Another wet day & another delay

Yet another wet day and to make matters even more depressing we had an early morning call from the guy who was supposed to be fitting our gate and trellis today to say that he would not be coming. He will now be coming a week today. The reason for the delay is because apparently the trellis posts would not fit onto the delivery van. So they should now come in next week's delivery and not this week's as was intended. Well that's an excuse that I haven't heard before.

A weekend of two parties

On Friday night we went to a fortieth birthday party at one of the neighbours, who live down the lane. The weather was fine and we sat outside admittedly we were dressed against the evening chill. In the dark we managed to spy our next door neighbours and we spent most tof the evening chatting to them - something that we hadn't done for some time as we rarely see them. Del boy had shaved off his mustache and was there without his WAG so I didn't recognise him. Inevitably there was a disco and karoke which the younger guests had a go at. We were surprised to hear several old number played, some of which must have been hits long before the party girl herself was born. Around 11 pm they played Those were the days and As tears go by and we felt that it was past our bedtime so made our goodbyes and staggered the 100 yards down the lane to our house. We heared Del boy come back not long after us. He let the burglar alarm off as he came in which was not surprising as he was knocking back the drink.

Then on Sunday afternoon we went to a garden party for charity. This was held in a half acre terraced garden on the banks of the River Dee and was a much more sedate affair. After a tour of the garden we sat by the river in the sun, drinking tea from bone china cups and eating sandwiches without their crusts and home made cakes. The proceeds from the afternoon were several hundred pounds all for a good cause.

Rain or shine

On Friday nights we religiously watch the weather forecast and plan our weekend activities accordingly. So on the basis of the forecast that we saw on Friday night we planned to garden on Saturday then do some shopping and indoor jobs on Sunday. How wrong the forecast was. Saturday was partly miserable and Sunday was glorious. So we didn't quite achieve what we wanted do but some things were done in spite of the weather. The last place that I wanted to be on a sunny Sunday morning was sitting in the car in a traffic jam in Chester but that was where I found myself. We would have done the shopping on Saturday if we had our own piece of seaweed to forecast the weather from. Or maybe we should invest in one of those little houses were the lady comes out when the weather is fine and the man comes out when the weather is bad or maybe it is the other way round - I can't remember now. Anyway Sunday was the last day of the Laura Ashley sale so we had to go to order a sofa for our snug. At the moment we are using the living room and if we want to use the snug we have to move a sofa into it, which is quite a performance as we have to move the stereo unit to get the sofa through the door and more importantly it is not the right colour for the snug. Then when we want to use the living room the sofa has to be moved back. So to make life easier we are having another sofa and as it is a bit of a luxury, we are buying it in the sales. As what we want is a small beige fabric sofa, I thought that it would be easy enough to buy from any furniture shop, but no - they are full of large leather sofas which seem to be all the rage, at the moment. Somehow not appropriate for our Victorian cottage. So Laura Ashley it is. It takes about eight weeks from order to deliver so we should have the sofa by the end of October which will be around the time that we will want to start to use the snug, as we use it more in the winter. Originally we were going to leave this purchase until the January sales but that would mean not having the sofa until about March by which time hopefully winter will be almost over. Well winter seemed to be the last thing on my mind as we sweltered in the car in the traffic in Chester. It just happened to be race day and the streets were full of race goers dressed in what would once have been their Sunday best. At least they had good weather and didn't get the usual soaking which often happens on race days.