Grimsdale goes festive

‘What are you doing?’ I snarled at Grim, seeing him glued to his computer when there’s a chapel to convert. ‘On that woodwork chatgroup again?’

Turns out he’s on Abe Books hunting down my Christmas presents. I keep a list in the front of my filofax of books I’d like to read, everytime someone mentions a good one or I read a review and think ‘hmm yes, sounds interesting’. So when it came time to start letting him know what I wanted this year, I typed it up and gave him a print out, thinking I’d maybe get one or two.

There’s nothing nicer than a big fat pile of new reading under the tree on Christmas Day. Bathsalts have lost their allure since we dont have a bathroom yet – likewise scented candles and suchlike. A good novel can take my mind off anything, even the sound of the mice busily working their way around the building each night.

He’s working his way down the list picking up secondhand copies on Abe books, for as little as 49p each, good ol’Grim eh!

Not your ordinary sawhorse

Im a patient woman. I live in a building site and dont complain while he tells the UK Woodworking chatgroup why they shouldnt be using routers, puts up shelves for his mum, insists he has to dig the allotment NOW. I believe him when he says he’s researching building construction on the internet. But now Grimsdale has spent about 3 weeks making ….. (duh-duhduhderderrrrrr!!!!) sawhorses!!!

Not just ordinary sawhorses. These have double splayed legs which are also square in plan while the section has to be rhomboid. They can only be made after masses of geometrical and trigonometrical calculation. You have to work out the dihedral he tells me over tea, either with a calculator or by drawing. It’s the fundamental exercise you have to go through in setting out a roof.

Yes but, we had the roof done by a proper roofer when we still had some money. Why the dihedral etc etc?

He needed to make the sawhorses so he had something to put the windows on! Silly me. This is the year of the windows. It’s the end of November and there are 10 more to do. I spect we’ll get there.

Progress – at last

Ooooh! Did I say Grimsdale has been scattered with sawdust? Do I hear hammering from upstairs? Looky here now!! A window!

This is the first of the big windows. There are another 9 to go. All the 10 curved tops have been cut out, all the machining for 10 frames has been done but the glazing bars havent all been cut yet because the details will vary – some will have opening lights and some won’t.

Sunday woods

Sunday morning walk to clear my party night head. The dog was happy, the day was lovely, the woods smelled of autumn: what? bracken, leaves, dust, berries and a tang of horse manure.

It’s been a long long lull on the building front, but I’ve been noticing sprinklings of sawdust on Grimsdale recently – could it be that things are happening again, up in the woodowrk nerve centre? Watch this space. But dont hold your breath. Like all women partnered with joiners and builders I know better than to expect hasty completion on any project, but this one is getting ridiculous!!

Things to do on Anglesey part 1

Anglesey ís a pretty low key kind of a place. Families, beaches, buckets and spades, pretty scenery, Welsh speakers. Ynys Mon, the isle of the druids. The OS map will show you where all the ancient cairns and burial mounds and monuments are. You can spend a whole holiday visiting those.
Most people cross the Menai Bridge and head for Beaumaris, but let’s instead go clockwise round the island, turn left after the bridge and head for Newborough. A small grey two-sheep village with a couple of shops and a good chippie. Now discover the secret of Anglesey – like all the small grey terribly local villages, Newborough sits on the edge of a secret and brilliant place.

Newborough Warren was once the home of ancient Welsh kings and is now a national nature reserve. There ís a friendly small campsite and beyond that miles and miles of sandy dunes, pine tree woodland and pure golden endless sands along the edge of the Menai Straits. Wonderful views of Snowdonia’s mountains just over the water accompany your walk. Beach is dog friendly outside holiday season.

Maltltreath Sands is next, making a whole corner of the island a paradise for birds and the place where Tunnicliffe the famous bird artist lived. Great walking or cycling.

Next come a series of beaches filled in summer with the bucket and spade brigade: Rhosneigr, Trearddur Bay which sits right next to Valley, where the RAF base is. You can build your sandcastle right underneath the giant jets as they take off straight over your head. There’s a campsite even closer to the airfield which is filled with the roar of jets and small boys and dads with big smiles on their faces.

From Holyhead catch a ferry to Ireland for the day, otherwise don’t linger in the town but head out to the cliffs of North Stack and South Stack and Holyhead Mountain.

Come back off Holyhead island and start taking left hand turns off the main A5025 onto the yellow lanes that wind and trundle up and over low hills by the coast. They’re all lovely, they all lead you down to someone’s special, magic beach. If you’re hungry, head down to Church Bay for simply the best of everything homemade beach cafe in the universe, serving the biggest crispest scone filled with a mound of whipped cream and dotted with strawberries; the lightest crispest pastry on the cheese and onion pie. Sleep it off in yet another delightful sandy cove, filled with families, windbreaks, tottering toddlers and tail waving dogs.

Carry on north, turning east at the top of the island and stroll out along the shingle of Cemlyn Bay where the natural lagoon is a bird sanctuary.

Wales, Wales and more Wales

It wasn’t enough to go once, it wasn’t enough to go twice, no three visits to Wales this summer. Camping near St Davids.

Zen Cooking & Duck Dabbling

Bottoms up in Lathkilldale, idyllically beautiful stream and nature reserve. We went in search of dippers, chubby little bobbing waterbirds for my old friend Louise from Oz, publisher and expert in the wild wildlife of the bush.

In spite of its tameness, our lovely stream did not disappoint and the ducks and dabchicks more than made up for the disappearing dippers.

All will be silent here for a week as I too disappear, to deepest Wales to cook for the Zen meditators of the Western Chan Fellowship.

Zen Cooking – MrsG ties on her apron, heads off with a car load of food (meditation is hard work) can it all be held in the mind at once? Only with great concentration. All is silence – until July 23rd.

Fairs, festivals, fetes & get togethers

High summer, and weekend Derbyshire is just one festival after another.  The Vintage Motorcycle Club were gathering at the Stone Centre when we walked through to get the Sunday paper. The motorbikes gleaming and spotless, their  grey haired riders all in leathers with happy smiles on their faces.

Later, to Shipley Park once a coal tip now a country park for a multi cultural festival of music and dance and a performance chance for young bands from the area. Squelchy underfoot so the breakdancers had to perform outside the visitor centre, but the sun was shining, nobody had any suncream with them.

Bilberries on Stanton Moor

Bilberries big as blackcurrants on Stanton Moor. Discovered on the first sunny day for weeks, they’ve been secretly growing in the rain and no one out walking to pick them!

Velvet curtains & blogging for idiots

First rule of blogging for idiots: write the post first, in fact write the post in Notepad before you start fiddling with the technical stuff.

Somewhere, floating in the techno stew is the most brilliant post about French velvet curtains redolent of provincial hotels – however, I stopped halfway through diverted by uploading the picture and options on offer and lost it forever.

We’d got up at the crack to drive a van over to Manchester and help Garden Guerilla Girl get the last sticks out of her old family home. A 1930s bedroom suite, some bits from the garden and an anvil being all that remained, it barely made a vanful to bring to an end 3 or 4 generations in the same house. We left GGG performing a last neighbourly act and mowing the lawn for the batty old lady next door that she’d known all her life.

On the way back we stopped here, at Cafe Nats in Buxton, one of my favourite places. Not just a cafe, but they sell old textiles, velvet curtains and engaging bits of junk as well. She goes to the giant flea market in Lille, the lady here, and sold us our bedroom curtains, big enough for chapel windows, dark green with slight fading in streaks where they’d hung through long quiet dusty French afternoons.