Is it a bird, is it a plane.. no its the Super Lampshade guy!

Recently Douglas and I purchased some new lampshades, and once I had given this one a good wash, it was suitable to be given away. When we have something that still has life in it, but we no longer need/want, it normally goes on Freegle.

I put the offer of this lampshade on, and someone was very keen to give it a new home on verbal description alone.. so I thought I would send her a photo by email to make sure she did really want it!

I gave the lampshade to Douglas, and asked him to model it.. so he did :-D

The lampshade, but not the base (As shown here in the photo) will be picked up on Tuesday.

The base (also known as Douglas) is far too precious to be disposed of.. anyway our local Freegle site does not allow living things apart from plants to be offered :-)

Beautiful Yorkshire

I just had to share these with you. My parents went out today with their canoe to a place about ten miles from York, and found this beautiful clear river. What a beautiful spring photos!

Love is...

Billy has decided that the best game in the universe involves killing long papyrus fronds, but my plant is running slighly low on stalks, so last night I put a request out on Freegle for some raffia.

When the papyrus stalks are dry they look and feel a bit like raffia, so I thought Billy (and Lilly) might not mind the substitue!

I had an email from my friend, Eliese, to say she had some spare raffia and would pop it through my door at some point.

I got home and found a little bag with plenty of raffia to make several decent cat dangling strings.. this is the result when I made one. A very happy cat indeed!

Later, Douglas and I were watching telly. I sat on the floor to play with Billy a bit, then picked him up for a cuddle. He walked off me and settled on the sofa next to Douglas, purring away like an engine whilst I took the opportunity to worship him some more. I do love my little boy so much!

I must not miss my favouite little girl out! She has been keeping me company up on the desk whilst I typed this, demanding that I typed one handed, the other hand being needed to worship her highness :-) Lilly (or Constance as we call her when she "constantly" demands love and attention) is very happy when one of us are up here - she must think that the fluffy cushion case between our computers is here throne :-)

Shes such a little darling.. very affectionate, and (even after several years of life with us) is still growing in confidence - once or twice now, I have actually managed to pick her up without her being utterly terrified and wanting down immediatley.

One day we may have a lap cat.. one day.. but we are not in a hurry :-) Good things come to those who wait.

Choir

I am delighted to say my choir has started again after a long Easter break.

We started, and finished with an African song which means step (or come) forward. It was fun, but I found it hard without the words (albeit very simple) to look at.

Here you see some of the members singing, with our dynamic enthusiastic leader, Helen Lyle, in the red top doing her thing, and singing along with us.

We danced /moved with the music and walked around as we sang.

Its good to be back!

A sunny weekend

Over the weekend we had TWO BBQs!!

On Saturday my little brother and his kids came round for for a BBQ. I did overtime in the morning, so Douglas did a wonderful job getting a potato salad and a tomato salad made. They had cocktail sausages and chicken bits marinaded in yoghurt and home made curry/tandoori powder, I had veggie sausages made into kebabs with lovely peppers and mini tomatoes (with the same type of yog curry coating on!

Sadly, I didnt take any photos.. mainly because Martha and Leo were very busy playing "Sims" and other games on my phone lol. Thomas has an Iphone as well now, so they were both very happy playing games!

We went in after lunch, and Thos put his feet up in our armchair, and snoozed, whilst the kids entertained themselves. He dozed for about an hour, which was rather sweet! Douglas did the same, dropping off to sleep like a cat in our lovely warm conservatory!

On Sunday, Douglas and I had our own barby... and I did take a couple of photos... here is one, I will pop more on later!

Long awaited update part 2

We got to Kettlewell and with some help from a poorly photocopied picture of where to and where not to park our car, we found our cottage.

Look about 6 or 7 down in this link, and you will see a tiny photo of the cottage we stayed in.

River Cottage is tiny. It has a small living room with a semi open plan kitchen downstairs, and upstairs it just has a bathroom and one bedroom.. thats it! It was great for a couple to have a very relaxing holiday :-)

We met up with the rest of the family, and had our evening meal with them, which was very pleasant.

On Wednesday, Douglas was still feeling a bit fragile, and so was I, so we decided to have a restful day exploring a nearby town of Skipton, which was lovely.

Follow this link, and click on any of the orange dots for views of the town!

Thursday we spent in Harrogate with our neice Martha. She had been pony trekking the day before, and was feeling rather stiff and sore as a result. Her dad and the two boys set off on a long hike up to see a limestone pavement, and as she would not have coped with it, we were lucky enough to adopt her for the day!!

One little treat we had was a visit to the world famous Bettys Tea Rooms. They opened in 1919 and are still going strong today! At lunch times, people queue for ages for a seat, but we went for a mid morning cuppa, and were able to get seated as soon as we walked in.

Below are views of part of the menu and the view from our seat.

That evening, Thos took us all for a meal out in one of the local pubs, and although it took a VERY long time to arrive, we had good food and a pleasant evening out.

Douglas really didnt feel very well again on Friday, so we spent a very quiet day in our cottage. We had also agreed to make an evening meal for everyone, so I popped out to the local shop (ouch! incredibly expensive, but then I guess it is a small village shop and they have to inflate their prices to make ends meet) to buy a few things, and then had a wander round the quaint village church that has some very beautiful and moving stained glass windows.

We cooked a roast chicken, mashed potatoes and broccoli for that evenings meal - we had salmon on brown bread for starters, I was pleased to see that everyone (apart from Carlo, and hes only 5) had some of the salmon. Despite having rather limited cooking facilities, we managed to produce a good meal that all enjoyed.

I made myself a really tasty veg stir fry as Im veggie, with home made sweet and sour sauce thats incredibly easy to make ( mix sploshes of vinegar, sweet chilli sauce, soy sauce, a teaspoon of jam or honey together until the whole thing tastes right). I had that with rice and thoroughly enjoyed it, as did Thos when he tried some after his main meal.

Saturday was packing up and going home day. We chose a much more sensible route home (non sat nav lol) and got home about lunch time.

My parents went via York to pick up Toby, one of my older brothers sons for a few days holiday which was nice, as we dont see a huge amount of his two boys.

As soon as Toby had left, my parents had yet more visitors! This time it was my fathers brother, my Uncle Bill who lives in Germany, and one of his sons, Chris, who lives in London. Yesterday my mum drove Bill over to see us, and tomorrow Chris is going to meet up with Douglas (who is still on holiday) and they are going to cook up a storm in the kitchen, as they both love cooking.

Well, thats it until I get some photos of the various goings on emailed over to me from my mum!

I promise not to leave it so long before my next entry, but please feel free to prod me if the gap seems too long :-)

Long awaited update part 1

So! its been ages since I updated my blog.. various people have prodded me via email about doing so, and to them and the rest of you I apologise (and Im now updating as I should have done ages ago!)

Last week, the week before Easter, as a birthday present for me (and because it was a nice thing to do) my parents had booked up (and paid for) a family holiday. They booked a cottage for me and Douglas, and a large house for them, my younger brother and his three kids (Katy, his wife was working, so sadly couldnt join us)

Douglas and I were off work on the Friday, and due to set off on the Saturday morning, but by then Douglas kept being sick, and when he wasnt being sick he was making urgent dashes to the loo. He was feeling very grotty :-( Our thoughts on this were "oh no, not again" as hes suffered from this problem quite a few times now.

By abut 10.30am, I could see he wasnt getting any better, so we called the out of hours Dr service. Eventually, after the Doctor had phoned and found out what was going on, an ambulance turned up outside our house, and left with a hot/cold shivering/sweating sicky Douglas!

I followed, and after keeping him company and looking after him for several hours, the hospital Dr decided he needed intravenous antibiotics and a hospital bed. As the time ticked by I saw our holiday trickle like water through my fingers. I had been so looking forward to it.. and poor Douglas was feeling so horrible. It looked like our week off was going to be written off as a disaster.

By Monday morning, I was going stir crazy, so went into work and did half a days admin which took my mind of the fact that my parents, Thomas and the kids were having a lovely time in the picturesque Dales!

Dear Readers.. I rescued him on Tuesday afternoon. We came home, I packed the car, and off we went!

The journey up to Kettlewell was not uneventful. We engaged SatNav but not brain, so the dreaded contraption took us the most dreadful route via the suburbs of Bradford, a large sprawling and not terribly well off city. Just on the outskirts of the City, we noticed some smoke, and soon realised it was from the back passenger side wheel of our car!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We stopped in a garage forecourt, well away from the petrol pumps, and called our car rescue service who came out to us within a couple of hours. The RAC man turned up, and had a good look at the wheel and brakes etc, and worked out that the problem was due to Douglas leaving the handbreak of the car on a few notches whilst driving, that had caused one wheel to get very hot and burn some of the greese away (that was the smoke).

Mr RAC rescue man followed us in our car for about 6 miles further up the road to ensure that there was no other problem, then left us to continue on to Kettlewell, much releived that it was nothing more serious!

Part 2 follows :-)