Greece 2017 Corfian days

Hello there,

I thought it was probably about time I shared some photos from my holidays this Summer!

We were planning to journey to mainland Greece to the Vikos Gorge and it seemed that Corfu was the best place to fly to in order to get there!

Our first night, after a 1.5 hour delay, we arrived at our hotel in Hermones, The Philoxenia.  It seemed a very pleasant quiet place. Before arriving, we were worried it was too far from the airport to be arriving so late at night, but we were incredibly glad to have booked away from Corfu Town which was hideously busy!

Our first morning, after a pleasant breakfast all turned out to be a bit too dramatic!  We walked to the beach to swim and as we were walking along, a boat arrived with a panicked man shouting to the beach.  As we came closer, we saw a beach chair being used as a stretcher and a man's body was on it. We saw great bleeding gashes to the side of his head and face.  A hysterical lady was helped off the boat and then the boat full of passengers took off.  We were perplexed and traumatised to see the man.  A great crowd was nearby so we moved out of the way, not to be in the way.  CBC asked what had happened and was told that a boat propellor had hit him in the head.  We couldn't discern any other details but saw the man's face was covered up with a blanket! It was very sobering to realise you can die in paradise and we couldn't stop talking and thinking about it.  We were wondering about what had happened and later, CBC's sister found the story online. 
After this, we walked along the cliffs but it was scorching hot- still the views were amazing.  We went to buy some items in the shop and CBC discovered his money belt had gone with all his money and cards in!  He ran back to the beach as I trailed after.   He'd asked in the hotels and bar but no one had seen it. He was very cross with me because he had removed it from his dry bag and put it in his rucksack so I could use the drysack for my aquashoes so he decided that it must have fallen out then and angrily stomped home to the hotel to try and find his phone and call the card company. As you can imagine, I felt terrible and decided to go and ask people on the beach myself. I scrutinized the beach and then went to the other end of the beach near the boat hire desk where the dead man had been brought in.  I asked them if they'd found a money belt and to my utter joy, they reached under their desk and handed it to me! Apparently, when we were enquiring about the man, CBC had gone into his bag to look for a first aid kit, and had just dropped it on the beach there! I was SOOOO thankful to have found it and ran back to the hotel just in time to stop CBC cancelling his cards! Two rather horrible events that day.

I spent the rest of the day swimming in the beautiful hotel pool and reading books- it was all too much! The Philoxenia is a delightful family run hotel.

The next morning, we had to bid goodbye to sunny Hermones and head to Corfu Town via the very cheap green line bus. CBC had booked an Air BnB place in the centre of Corfu town so we could easily reach the port to get a boat to the mainland the next morning.

After being picked up by our host at the Bus station, we headed to our very central room which was totally in the centre of Corfu-Town but was in a quiet tiny street. We had a main room plus a little kitchenette and bathroom with washing machine. He'd provided us with bread, cheese, ham, wine, water and juice so we were able to have lunch there.

Heading into Corfu Town, we wandered around and saw this statue of Gerald Durrell, the writer, who had lived there for a while.

Here's the Old Fort.

I quite liked this interesting Bagel sculpture.

The weather was just so hot so we eyed up these people swimming with great envy!

Here's a cutie pigeon. I was very angry with the small boy who ran at it and tried to hit it!

There was some lovely architecture to see.

I honestly found it unbearably hot- sweating profusely.  I sat down on a bench by this graffiti for a good half an hour.

There seemed to be many adorable cats around the town.

We were delighted to go into the Corfu M&S, not because we wanted to go into M&S but because its delicious air con could be felt from outside!  We sat outside on the steps and people watched.
I have got to explain the slightly dubious picture below.  We were sitting there and a lady and her young child walked past.  They were both clutching Calippo ice-lollies. The child, in true You've been Framed fashion, lost his ice-lolly as it slipped out of the container.  I am a horrible person because this always makes me laugh lots! I saw another child do this on Saturday and equally sniggered.
Anyway, so she hauled the screaming kid off and the discarded section of the Cola flavoured Calippo sat on the ground like a cross between a large turd and a slug. I found this irrationally funny and said we had to sit there and see if anyone trod in it and what they'd do if they saw it.  We were ridiculously silly about it and sniggered every time someone came past.  There were all sorts of horrified disgusted facial expressions as people saw it or narrowly missed treading on it and what made it worse was we laughed every time and they obviously though WE had laid some sort of trap!

This is the view of the room we were staying in.

Eventually, we decided to go and sit in a lovely restaurant by the water, having missed the closing times of the museums we wanted to visit. It was perfect there- in the shade with nice views.

We decided to stay there for dinner away from the ridiculously hot and heaving restaurants in the central town.

I ordered a fish dish, CBC had Whitebait and something else and we shared another amazing Greek salad!

There was a series of adorable kittens who plagued us for food. We gave them Whitebait!

The sunset was utterly sublime where we were sitting since we were right by the water.  I took many photos.

The restaurant had this jetty coming out from it and as it reached dusk, they set out these candles in lanterns to light it. It was beautiful!

Eventually, we headed back to the apartment/room ready to go to sleep for an early start in the morning.

More anon...

Easy card ideas- Using stickers for cards

Hello there,

I hope you are well. I have had a good, albeit draining day of 3 back to back Beginner recorder teaching lessons, Tudor Dance and Singing Assembly. All being done with a very intense headache. It has started to abate a bit as I have reached home and relaxed a bit more.

I have some very simple (and not, if I am to be honest, good) card ideas to share today.  I had this pack of Farmyard animal stickers that seemed to be losing their stickiness. I decided to try and resurrect them for some simple card ideas.

The above one is definitely not finished, it looks decidedly dodgy, but I thought it might be nice to add some ferns in the background.

This one is slightly better, perhaps because the sticker is a bit more prominent.  If you wanted to make some cards with kiddies, you could use this idea- get them to draw some grass round the edges and stick stickers in the centre.

Have a nice day!

xx

TARDIS Tuesday- Clara Oswald- modern Robots of Sherwood

Image borrowed from Wornontv.net

Today's TARDIS Tuesday features, yes, you guessed it, Clara Oswald again! This is an outfit she wears briefly during the episode, The Robots of Sherwood, before changing into a Medieval gown.

The episode was a great one- it had some very fun dialogue between the Doctor and Robin Hood who were both trying to be too alpha-male. Clara triumphs as the one who uses her head instead of showing off!

It features a teal jumper from Oasis with a faux-leather collar and a Topshop purple and teal skort (skirt and shorts combined)

And here is my version.  It also features the same Skort (purchased second-hand for £5ish) and an Oasis jumper but with an alternative leather-collared top!

I wore mine with my teal DMs- since they are super comfy! I found this whole outfit really comfy but a bit dress as well! I LOVE the skort- the solution to wanting to wear a skirt but preserving decency when leggings won't work!

Much as it would be nice to have the teal jumper, I am perfectly happy with my lighter-shade!

Image borrowed from WornonTV.net

What do you think of Clara's look? Do you think it works? 

xx

The curious addiction of gardening

Today, after returning from church on what was a gloriously sunny day, I felt compelled to venture out into the garden. The feeling of getting out there was multifarious since a lot needs to get done and also, the joy of sunshine meant I wanted to be out there in it. I ate my lunch in the garden reading a book and then began in earnest. The joy of our 100foot garden is its beauty, privacy, feeling of seclusion and ever changing plant growth but it certainly is a demanding beast which I am afraid to say I have neglected in recent times, being away most of the holiday and pretty much having been out every weekend since.

You can never just go into the garden to complete a quick task- once there, a sense of obligation and a yearning to keep taming, keep pruning, keep weeding, just one foot more, just head over for that rose bush, takes over.  I started by pruning back an irritating tree from my neighbour's- it has planted a small version in my garden too which is a bit too thick to completely demolish with my trusty secateurs.  Doing this, I noticed that the brambles and ivy were taking over the fence so they had to be vanquished and the underside of the fern tree, which I had recently ruthlessly attacked, still held a lot of dead brown twiggage.  Moving on, the mallow, which I had also pruned back, since it sprawls over onto the lawn in a most ungainly fashion due to lack of pruning for years or a warped branch, also needed a lot of brown foliage and a lot more pruning. As always, when tackling this large raised side-bed, I discovered a lot of nettles and bramble evil going on under the cover of more benign plants, so this involved climbing into the thick of it and trying to follow the labyrinthine trails of ivy, brambles etc to try and find the source.  

Other unwieldly shrubs which had also escaped from the confines of the brick wall needed similarly to be usurped in their bids for supremacy and then trying to tackle a rather large leafy bush with an absolute myriad of dry twigs on its undercarriage.  More bramble maze trails to conquer and cutting back roses galore. I do worry that I am damaging these shrubs since I don't know if I should be ruthlessly pruning them as I do. Have I cut them back too far?  

Over to the arch, I discovered the overladen pear-tree had shed a load of pears yet they were still unripe and were being attacked by a particularly virulent rose-bush who I reduced along with some enthusiastic honeysuckle.

A brief stop to pick a trug full of pears which I left on the lawn to supplement later.

Yet more firm yanking up of a multitude of young brambles and ivy which seemed to have trailed all over the lawn, they put up a good fight, attacking me on all fronts. Bindweed had entwined a whole rosebush and fennel plant which I cut down.

Once this was abandoned after a excursion beneath a prickly bush to find more brambles, I could have left it there but instead, headed to my sadly abandoned vegetable bed from last Summer- overgrown in a dense layer of wispy weeds, brambles and still reclining leek seed heads.

In the meantime, I visited my neighbour to borrow her wheelie-bin as mine was crammed full of spiky foliage.

There was a brief interval when CBC returned from a 160Km cycle race to drink tea with him and to hang up another load of washing.

Yet more hacking back and I decided to do what I had first intended... to plant leek plants into trays and pots. I still have a hankering hope that we might somehow find a house before the leeks are ready so I don't want to leave them in the ground. I feel rather guilty since we discovered back in March that one of the leek heads all seemed to have germinated.  We planted the 'head' in  a pot and forgot about it. Fast forward to know and about 100 leek plants with tightly wound roots reside in the pot and desperately needed to be planted.  I hadn't been able to do so until I'd bought some compost.

Another hour was spent planting about 40 leek plants into various trays and pots which involved evicting some very miffed weeds who had been enjoying their squatting status.  I have high hopes for them.  I hasten to add that there are still about 60 plants still waiting in the original put. I will have to try and clear the veg bed and plant them soon.

The two cumbersome wheelies had to be taken outside since thankfully it is BIN DAY tomorrow and I noticed that the deadly nightshade which has grown around the lamp-post outside our house has grown rampantly and was around knee height so that had to be cut back.

Back to the garden and the mess from potting the leeks had to be cleared up, hands washed and washing on various horses and rotary drier had to be collected and taken in.  It was dark by this point.  Inside, I shed my grimy garments and took off clothes from clothes horses so others could be hung and then into the shower.

I couldn't believe that I had been out in the garden for around 6hours.  It really does become an addiction of 'just one more'.  But it is an interminable task. As usual, my stomach and groin muscles are rather painful due to the amount of effort required to yank stubborn ivy and brambles and aching RSI wrists but such a satisfactory feeling to have spent the good of the day out there.  

If you have made it to the end of that rather laboriously written account, very well done to you!

What's your approach to gardening?

xx

I found the fairies

Just a little post here.   

Back in August, when CBC and I visited Northumberland for a week to stay with his lovely parents, we went for a walk as part of the Poems in the Air initiative (more about that another time).  I was a little miffed as CBC had glimpsed a red squirrel scampering across the road as I was looking the wrong way. Thus, as we continued our walk, I was scouting the terrain and tree canopy most intensely, hoping for my own sighting.  Alas, it was a futile exercise, as not one hair of a red squirrel did I catch!  However, at one point during the walk, probably a mile into it, through woods and fields,  CBC had gone ahead of me and I happened to glance back as I shut the gate and I suddenly saw a tiny fairy door, garden and home.

 I hasten to add, this really was miles from anywhere.  There it was, nestled in the roots of a tree.

 I may have missed my squirrel, but this was a really lucky finding. I imagine most people would completely miss it, but I happen to look down a lot!

 When I see things like this, I think how ardently people would like the world of little people, fairies, elves and the suchlike to exist! It is rather touching!

A tiny moment which gave me a happy glow as I continued to trudge across boggy fields!

xx

5 Brooches and friends #63

Thank you SO much for your supportive comments left yesterday today regarding my irksome house situation. I cannot say how much I appreciate your empathy and understanding.  We will continue to search and hope that something stirs our heart which we are able to obtain! 

It seems ages since I did a brooch round up on here so I thought I'd share a few. 

This tin Peacock butterfly brooch came from Re in Corbridge, Northumberland a few years ago. I like its lightness!

This brooch from Kimchi and Coconut was part of a subscription box which I regretted buying as I didn't like anything in it!  That said, the little clown fish poking through seemed to go well with this shirt!

This is a 'friend' for the post- this Hello necklace was such a surprise from our School business manager- she saw it and thought of me so she bought it for me and presented it to me at school one day! What a darling!!

'The Girl who waited' is a quote from Doctor Who.  It came in a Lucky dip box and whilst it is nice to have a Doctor Who quote necklace, it is a bit of an ambiguous one! What would you think if you saw someone weearing it?

Finally, this was Tuesday's combination.  I added the two cute knitted brooches that Hazel gave me and added the charity shopped button brooch! They seemed to go with the blouse!

Any favourites here?  Have you worn any brooches lately? I will do a mammoth blog catch up at the weekend!

xx

How things work out

Hi there,

I know a few of you have asked about my current situation with buying a house. I know some of you saw my frustrated comments about a vendor who hadn't found a house.
Sadly, after patiently waiting 5.5months for our vendors to find a house, they have decided to not sell since they can't find anything they like.

I cannot tell you how disappointed and despondent I feel about that.  We feel well and truly messed around - we've missed the best season for buying houses, annoyingly two houses, we quite liked went off the market two weeks ago and despite the rumour that house prices seem to have steadied, it doesn't seem to be the case where we want to live- everyone is determined to hike the prices further.  It just feels that every one is moving on with their lives and we are a bit stuck. I know that Louise and a few others have been in this gutting situation and everyone tells you that you will find your house eventually, but knowing that or being told that is hard.

What we were buying was at the very top of our budget and whilst prices have gone up, affording something of that standard seems impossible.

I just feel that everything will be compared to this house- it was so perfect in many ways- size of rooms, location, general condition, the fact that everything appliance-wise was integrated and new, fitted wardrobes, beautiful garden, beautifully maintained, very desirable location.
Even more so recently, I have just felt tired of renting, tired of not feeling like we can invite friends round or to stay- wanting things to have their permanent place and I really don't want to outstay our welcome in this bungalow we are renting. I am so incredibly grateful to my friends at church for renting it to us, but I wonder if both of them are totally happy for it to continue much longer.


Perhaps we will have a lucky find but right now, I am feeling rather gloomy. Plus, my Chinese Chop Suey came full of mushrooms. I didn't know it had them in it and didn't think to ask for it without them, which I am sure I don't usually do.

On a positive note- this was a nice Wednesday at school.  Truly exhausting, but wholly satisfying, particularly my delightful year 4 Tudor Dance Class.

xx

TARDIS Tuesday- Rose Tyler- The Doctor Dances

Hello there! 

Today's TARDIS Tuesday is a new one for me! I am cosplaying Rose Tyler, the first companion of New Who- with Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant's doctors.

My favourite episode of Christopher Eccleston's tenure was The Doctor Dances- set during WW2- there seemed to be some sort of disease where people were turning into gas mask zombies who asked, "Are you my mummy?"

Happily, everything turned out brilliantly and no one ended up dead!

Rose Tyler wore a fitted Union Flag t-shirt, blue jeans, a grey/black hooded jacket and her hair tied back with the sides back, rather messily.

Image borrowed from Fanpop.com but belongs to the BBC.

This one for me came from the t-shirt. I found it in my local charity shop about 4 months ago for £4 and I decided to give it a go because often we have red, white and blue days at school or 'wear a flag' day and things so it seemed something you could wear for that.

I don't seem to have a dark hooded fitted jacket but I do have this charity shopped one I have worn for numerous Clara cosplays when a fitted jacket or leather jacket is needed.

Image borrowed from Badwolf cosplay but images belong to the BBC

I wore my only real jeans that I have- these are at least 16 years old.  I added my old Doc Martens boots as Rose wears pale blue Timberland ankle boots.

Finally, I attempted similar hair!

And there is my completed look.

What do you think?  Would you recognise this as Rose's iconic look?

xx

An attempt to rescue a Bee.

We came home last Sunday after having spent the Saturday night away at CBC's Brother's and then driving onto the aforementioned Christening.  I went to open our sliding patio doors and put my hand towards the curtain to move it out the way and let our a scream!

For, millimetres from my outstretched fingers was an enormous bumblebee!  It was prone on the curtains.  

I was horrified that it had been trapped inside over a day and worried that it was dying because of my neglect.

I've heard many individual talk of giving bees sugar water to revive them so they can fly off safely.

In practice, removing an extremely large bumble bee from the curtains to do this was rather tricky.  I managed to remove it somehow and get in onto a garden tray after several attempts where it buzzed at me in a rather pathetically menacing way.  Attempts to get it onto or near the honey water spoon I had prepared was difficult and it seemed to be trying to avoid the spoon in its plodding painstaking movements.

Eventually, thank goodness, it put out its tongue or proboscis- and started to drink.

 It stayed for about 5 minutes and then stopped and tried to get under the leaves.  I really didn't know what to do, was it trying to hide or get past the leaves to the 'exit' from the tray, so I tried to move the leaves. A spattering of rain began and I started to worry about the bee.  I decided to try and pick him up and put him onto some leaves and a shrub so he could hide but he didn't seem very happy.

The rain became somewhat heavier and I had to leave him. I put the spoon underneath.

The reality of trying to rescue a bee was much less of a 'miracle cure' than I have been lead to believe by other people's experiences and I wish I had been able to do more. I felt really melancholy about the whole affair- I had tried my best but not seen great results.

Have you ever tried to rescue a bee with sugared water and what happened?

xx

Pastels in September

Yay!  The computer is working! Thankfully just a weird blip or prayer worked!  I was worried then!

Just a quick post to share an outfit I wore for a Christening last week.  The wearing of pastels is a very strange thing for me as I rarely do it! You are more likely to find me in brighter colours but the beautiful collar and the rainbow pastels and simplicity of this vintage-inspired dress from my favourite, Miss Patina won me over!  It is still for sale at Miss Patina for lots of money but someone was selling a brand new one on eBay for less than half the price of the original, and I had totally loved it so went for it!

Typically, since September had turned- everyone else was in black florals, navy florals and dark shades. I stood out rather in my lighter hues. Not to worry, I am rather used to that!

The christening was rather nice. It was a long church service with loads of liturgy and a sung Gloria and all the Mass bits like the Kyrie.  Given that the church was an old stone church and we sang traditional hymns- it was a total contrast to what I have become used to at my 1960's built, no more than an hour and a quarter, mainly modern-song church! Still, it was lovely to get back to my traditional Anglican roots.  After all, I was a choir girl from the age of 5, singing Mass and choral evensong and singing in a choir who deputised for Cathedral choirs in Cathedrals around the UK, so it is where I came from originally.

It was all rather lovely to see CBC's friend, whose child was being christened. He got together with, got married and had a baby very recently- so it is nice to see how that relationship has developed. The funny thing was, they were best friends for about 10 years and we always wondered why they had never got together!! Even more funnily, they refuse to tell us how it was that they eventually decided to get together!  I must say, I am longing to know! I do love a good relationship story!! I've never told my relationship story of how CBC and I met and got together on here and I probably never will, but I am rather glad how ours unfolded! It was, a Summer romance of the sweetest kind, and I always remember the glow of suddenly realising we liked each other.  The type of feeling, where you decide to sit on a bench talking together in a beautiful arboretum and decide to sit there during the downpour of rain because the key to not feeling miserable in the rain is having, as Alexander McCall Smith, through the eyes of Isabel Dalhousie said, "The right attitude to rain."

Hope your day is delightful.

xxx