A Hot Humid Sunny Week.

Sunday June 21st.

A double celebration at Niece Bev's home. Sister B's birthday and Nephew Josh's birthday was the reason for this gathering of family and friends.

The grown ups sat sedately in the shade supping beer, wine or cold soft drinks, while the kids had fun in the large garden pool and water slide.

The third reason to celebrate was when Barry presented Bev with a diamond solitaire engagement ring. Later we all scoffed from the enormous spread Bev and Barry had laid on.

A three tier chocolate wedding cake has been ordered. No date though!

A week at the Lido

The sun has managed to burn through the early morning clouds to make our morning swims really enjoyable this week. The water temperatures been a pleasant 21 to 22 degrees most of the week. We're all going a nice healthy shade of brown. A couple of mornings I've managed to swim a 1000 metres. Quite respectable for me but not a patch on some of my swim buddies. The weather brought out quite a few fine weather strangers to sample the clear cool water although not in this photo! Jan ploughs up an almost empty pool.
June 24th

Wednesday evening saw us making our fifth trip to Ikea. We'll soon be considered regulars! A few more bits and bobs need for the kitchen and another cabinet. This time we also returned some unwanted goods as well.

June26th

Friday afternoon and the regular early morning swimmers gathered at Marion & Ken's home for a surprise tea party to celebrate Johns 80th birthday. John thought he was just going for a cup of tea and a piece of cake. His face was a picture when we all surprised him. Marion had ordered this delicious champagne chocolate mousse cake from an Internet supplier.

June 27th Saturday.

Today has been grey and heavy but still very warm and humid The sun struggled to make much of an appearance today. We got some of the predicted rain this afternoon but it didn't cool things down at all Just made it more humid.

D's spent all day working on the Kitchen. It's all the fiddly finishing touches that need doing. I can begin see the end at last. Hurray. I still need to decide and source splash backs for the hob and sink area and I must get a window blind. I have to keep boarding the windows up in the afternoons otherwise we get blinded by the sun bouncing off the new sink!

The Classic Car show

I never managed to get around to posting news of last Sundays Classic Car show at Bourne. The little town of Bourne in Lincolnshire has had a love affair with racing cars and classic cars for almost three quarters of a century now. The racing driver Ramond Mayes lived in Bourne. Brought up at his fathers garage at Eastgate House, he went to school in Oundle and then on to Cambridge. Raymond was 9 years old when his father started racing and Raymond eventually followed in his footsteps forming BRM - British Racing Motors in Bourne in 1949. This years show was celebrating BRM's first Grand Prix victory in 1959. Exactly 50 years ago.

The vintage 1960, custom made Leyland Royal Tiger transporter. It replaced the BRM's team three Lodestar transporters.

These two certainly enjoyed looking at all the immaculate classic cars lines up for inspection.

Personally I found the unusual bonnet mascots more fascinating than the cars. The gold lady that perches on this vintage gold Rolls Royce that use to belong to Lady Docker.

The car below is all chrome blinged up and sparkled in the bright sunlight.

The chaps continued with their enthusiastic inspection. The ladies i.e. me and sister Babs retired out of the heat to the cool of her cottage with a welcome cup of tea.

..........and now for something wierd!

Try this,

Betcha can't do it!

While your sitting at your computer lift your right foot and draw clockwise circles in the air.

Ok, keep drawing those circles. Clockwise now.

Now with your right hand draw the number 6 in the air.............

so............. why's your foot now going the other way?


LOL cos you cant stop it.

Keep trying all you like...............

..........you wont manage to keep it circling clockwise .

Very strange.

The Growing Family

The older you get the faster the days seem to roll by. Sentiments echoed by many a Senior Citizen worldwide. All those years ago when our first born sprog arrived and life was a haze of feeding, changing and washing nappies etc. the thoughts of grand children and even great grand children were events so far in the future you could not imagine them ever happening. The suddenly your a great Grandma not just once but twice. Aren't great grandma's supposed to be rosy cheeked stooped old ladies in crimpline dresses and smelling of lavender or something?(probably more obnoxious) My Great grandma was.(no obnoxious smell though) I only ever remember her with fine silver hair scraped back in a bun and wearing black dresses. Oh and I forgot the fine whiskery chin. She lived to be 98 and died six weeks after our number 2 sprog arrived

So here I am with not one but two great grand children and I don't feel old enough to even have grand children! No silver hair, well yet, but I admit it's gone steely and I try not to have a whiskery chin but sometimes the odd stray one escapes my notice!

The only consolation is now my Mum's got two great great grandchildren making us a family of five generations. I must get the Family history files updated before any more children are added!

Sun, Sun, Sun.

Well, what a difference a week makes, have I said that before!!! Last weekend , so wet and miserable, this weekend hot and sunny.

The kitchen renovations, well, what can I say, it's progressed a little, all the paintings done. Every where's had three coats. It's white and a sage green. I'm now getting a little impatient with the slow progress though. DJ came to help with the painting but his illness caught up with him once more so he's retired! D, bless him, tried to get several jobs done yesterday but his shoulder has been so painful that he got somewhat frustrated at struggling to do some of the awkward jobs. A dislocated shoulder as a teenager had suddenly caught up with him. I'm going to have to Get JA back to help get it finished, otherwise we'll still be living like this at Christmas!

We decided to give D's shoulder a rest today and we went off early to the Bourne Classic Car Show at the Well Head in Bourne. There's allot of vintage cars, racing cars and motor cycles! On the way though we decided to stop at Willowbrook Farm and try the coffee at their new cafe cum restaurant, called 'The Granary'. Like many farms some diversification has been needed to make ends meet. They started a Farm Shop selling their own and other locally sourced meat and produce, but mostly meat from their own farm. The venture had been a success and they've expanded and improved the shop located in one of the farm buildings. The new venture is 12 weeks old and is located in an old granary that's been beautifully restored and turned into a small restaurant. Specialising in breakfasts it's been a success from the start. This morning the three large double glass doors were thrown open to make the most of the smorning sun, so as soon as we opened the car door we were greeted with the delicious smell of bacon cooking as they cooked breakfasts for their early visitors. The smell got to us I'm afraid and we ordered food. Not a full breakfast though but D had a sausage (their own make) and onion bap and I had a bacon bap. It was GOOD if somewhat naughty. the bap was stuffed with thick slices delicious home cured bacon. Oh and their afternoon tea with home baked cakes needs to be tried some day soon.

The Willow Brook Farm Shop

The Granary Restaurant

Very soon they are going to add futher ventures and will be opening up a track for visitors to be able to ramble over the fields across to the woods and pond. There's quite a diversity of wildlife to be seen. Out side and a few yards from the farm shop, there's a large, well constructed, fox proof, heavy duty mesh, chicken coup where a extremely handsome and vocal cockerel rules over a variety of equally handsome hens.

The very vocal spiced coloured 'Lord of the Pen'.

and His loyal subject!

More of the Classic Car event tomorrow.

A Wet Weekend

Ugh what a wet cold weekend! I've had to pull out a winter skirt and cardie and the central heating gone back on!

Yesterday we drove over to Spalding. On the way we stopped at a road side strawberry seller and bought two punnets of lovely ripe juicy strawberries. It made me realise that the farm along the road from us must be open for business by now. Great fresh local organic fruit and veg and on Saturdays they sell meat from a local farm. A sort of mini farmers market.

Any way, on to Spalding, after picking up our order of the best sausages in England and stashing them in the freezer box we went for a browse and some refreshments at our favourite shop in Spalding, Bookmark. This independent bookshop is still surviving in these 'credit crunch' lean times and long may it do so. There's a new book out 'Spalding in the Sixties' that we'll have to get the next time we go. The last time we were in the shop we bought 'Spalding in the Fifties' a very young David was in one of the photos in the book.

After a wandering around the town we couldn't help perusing the estate agents windows looking at bungalows. There's many more in the Spalding area so it wouldn't surprise me if we don't end up back in our home town sometime in the future.

There was a small Farmers Market on the Sheep Market along with the regular Saturday market lining the streets but nothing grabbed out attention so we headed of for the cemetery to tidy Grace and Ted's Memorial stone and leave our usual arrangement of spring garden flowers.

On our way home we stopped to visit D's Aunt and Uncle. The visit was long overdue. They have a well tended and productive vegetable garden and we came away with freshly dug potatoes some lettuces and spring onions. Today for our Sunday lunch the young new potatoes boiled with fresh mint from the garden went well with the tender roasted leg of lamb bought from the butchers on Saturday.

Ramblings

The ramblings have been a bit hit and miss of late. I suppose it's cos my minds been so full of other stuff. The kitchens still not in shape. We've had a plasterer in this week. The ceilings been skimmed smooth, no more artex! and the wall are now beautifully smooth. We're waiting out the drying time perusing the paint colour catalogues. It's a good job I can now use the cooker, hob and dishwasher although I'm having to work these shiny new gadgets with the instruction booklets in my hand. I can't wait for it all to be finished and ship shape. It's been three long weeks now and I'm hoping another week and we'll be on top of it with a shiny new kitchen. The weathers broken today and we are having some much needed rain. I managed to get my planters in the front garden planted during the week. The permanent lavenders plants were about to flower and look really good with white geraniums or pelagoninums as they are now called. The beans have been planted in my miniature veg patch along with a couple of Gardeners Delight tomato plants. The strawberries are ripening well. The first one fell prey to the greedy birds. I ask you, I feed them all year round and they reward me by pinching my juicy strawberries!

All this week I have been going for my daily dip in the Lido. It's been lovely. Still a little chilly in the water 20 to 21 degrees. Actually warmer in the water than out most days! The sun on the water has been gorgeous though and my skin is taking on some colour already. You can definitely see where my cosssie sits on me. There's one great advantage though as the water is so nippy we swim and the jaw exercises wait until a reviving coffee in Sunday's.