We are alive!!! (Part 5)

Ok, I lied lol. THIS is the last update.

Whilst the guys were sorting out our patio, they found a gorgeous little animal under a stone, and put it in a bucket for me to see when I got home from work.

The boys told me it was a lizard, so I had a look and indeed it looked very lizard like, very small and very cute!!
I took some photos of it before finding a new stone for it to hide under. I sent the photos to my friend Eliese, and also put it on Facebook. My parents, and then my older brother then both told me that my dear little lizard was a baby smooth newt!!!

For scale, the white thing on the left edge is egg shell, and the green bits are blades of grass.

I was rather dissapointed, but having a newt is still rather nice :-)

We are alive!!! (Part 4)

Hello blog readers! Part 4 and probably final part of my flurry of updates.

A month or so ago my mum and I took my younger brothers three kids to Whirlow Hall Farm ( Click HERE for a link!) sheering day. We parked in the field, and walked down to the farm to watch the sheering. We also spent some time making some sheep - well Leo tried the eyes, and Martha managed to make a sheep. I made one too, but it was a bit crazy as you will see by the photos!! We had a lovely time :-)





Crazy Leo :-)

Can you tell which one I made?

Douglas modelling the disaster sheep when it got home :-D The sheep is now on his desk at work lol!!


A few weeks ago, Douglas and I decided to get our horrible patio sorted out. The concrete lintel holding it all in was coming adrift, and it was a mess of weeds and uneven slabs - it was unusable and a mess!!

My parents knew a couple of young men - Richard and Alistair - who had fairly recently set up a gardening business, so after they had come round and had a chat, we decided to let them tackle their very first patio ever! They set a price, and promised that if it took longer they wouldn't charge as it was a learning process for them!!

Sadly I can only find one before photo, but I have more during and after photos!

This shows part of the patio before the lean-to got Freegled. It shows what a mess it was!



During..............

The guys took all the weeds out, removed all the old slabs, and dug the soil into the middle away from the area where the wall had fallen down, and away from the concrete lintel running parallel to the lawn, which needed re setting back into place.



They used a load of old bricks that were hanging around in the garden to make a good solid wall at the side of the path. They cleaned them all, and then created the wall, keeping the interesting ones for the top, so we can see where they were made - many from local brick factories that no longer exist.

This is the finished article in the evening sunlight :-)





The last one is Billy, who has given it his Royal seal of approval. We are very happy with it too!


If you live in the Sheffield area, and you would like a quote from Richard and Alistair, put a note on here and I will email you Richards mobile number :-) They are very hard workers, and you can see what a lovely job they made of their very first patio!!!

We are alive!!! (Part 3)

A few weeks ago, my boss at work had some spare tickets to go see Billy Elliot in London, and very kindly gave them to me!!

I asked Douglas if he wanted to go, got a resounding NO, asked my mum who was going down to London that weekend to see a friend.. again got a no... so I thought again, and contacted my friend Eliese who was delighted!!

We decided to make a day of it, and set off quite early, courtesy of a Douglas taxi. Eliese had not been down to London for ages, so I decided we would go and explore Camden Lock. We had a great time looking at all the strange clothes and other items for sale, as well as some very strange people!! Here are some of the photos I took.






This is the actual Lock! We sat and had a drink in a lovely cafe.


We got the tube, and got to the Theatre with a bit of time to spare.. this is Eliese looking excited (we both were) before we went in.



The show was amazing, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. It was different from the film, but a jolly good stage show!!

After a curry at a nearby restaurant, we got the train home, ending up back at Sheffield Railway station at about 11pm! Douglas wasnt feeling well, so we got a taxi back to mine, then I drove Eliese the 5 mins up several hills back to her place. I went home, and collapsed into bed exhausted but very happy!

We are alive!!! (Part 2)

We took Loonie and Amy to Bristol zoo whilst in the area. We had a great day looking at all sorts of animals - I think this one was the most fierce!



After the zoo, and dropping off Loonie and Amy, we went to Clifton (quite a posh bit of Bristol) and had a really lovely curry! Here I am having a veggie Thali - little portions of a few different curries! It made a good end to the day.


We also spent a day in Bath, having treated ourselves to a day at Bath Spa which was glorious. We each had an hour long massage, followed by four hours of the two pools and four steam rooms, broken by a glorious lunch in the Spas restaurant! This view is the roof top pool. The water is naturally warm, so sitting in it whilst feeling the cold (ish) air flow by and looking out at Bath is wonderful!!




On the day of the Royal Wedding, I watched the pomp and ceremony on TV in our holiday cottage whilst Douglas did his best not to :-)

We decided to leave a day early, because we had been invited up to Lawn Road, Fishponds, where we used to live. There is a park opposite our old house, and some of our ex-neighbours had organised a party! It was very strange to be back, but lovely to catch up with some of our old friends :-)

This photo is taken from the back of the church, looking onto our old house, and those of our ex-neighbours.


Loads of people turned up, we all brought food which was shared between all :-)




We drove back to Sheffield, got home at about ten, much to the joy of our cats who had missed us. We had a lovely holiday, but oh boy it was great to get back to our own bed!!

We are alive!!! (Part 1)

Hello my lovely bloggers!

I think a big update is in order :-)

Lets start with some photos of our "summer" holiday at Easter in the west country. We stayed in a little cottage near Wells, so we were close to Bristol to visit friends and mooch round Glastonbury and Bath once again!

This is the Grand Hotel on Broad Street, Bristol. Its just up a bit from where we used to work, and also where my parents had their wedding reception many years! We were lucky to have such lovely weather for our weeks holiday :-)

Parts of Bristol have changed greatly since we lived there. There is a huge shiny new shopping mall there, which has very sadly sucked life out of the rest of of the center of town centre. The once busy Galleries mall looked like a ghostly shell.. such a shame.



One reason we went to Bristol was to meet up with our friend Leonie, who we have known for years.... Im her daughters Odd Mother (no, not God mother) We met up in the new posh mall, and had a very expensive lunch (Not fab food either!) The photo below shows Leonie looking like her nickname, Loonie, and Douglas with his "beetle wing" clip on sunglasses.




I think Amy enjoyed her lunch more than we did!!


The place we stayed was in a village just outside Wells. It was an old dairy, converted into a little flat with a bedroom, bathroom, galley kitchen and living/diner area. It was a lovely place in a quiet area, but the bed was very soft and we didnt sleep well - its one of the perils of having a holiday, you can't take your bed with you!!

This is Douglas chilling in the living area.