Getting reacquainted! July views! Food and more food..etc!

WARNING.. VERY HEAVY PICTURE POST FOLLOWS !! ;-)

Oh my goodness a month has passed since I last wrote, lots of things have taken place, people have come and gone and events have happened, but it is so hard to get back on the blogging horse when there is so much to say.   I know I should just pick up here and run with it but as I kind of diarise it is hard to 'miss a bit'

As a starter I will go the easy route and share my July views..as ever excuse the quality of some of these pictures!

This is the latest July yard view.. I have a verandah almost! 

The kitchen arrives late July so August will see a lot of boxes in my window view, but in July we have used the new room for some dining..

 This is the view into the new room where my window view 'was' ... ahhh we had just got home from a trip to Manchester (more on that later) and Zac was having his last few days with us; also our pals from the States were staying to work on a trolley venture and spend some time ..that's Ben between JB and Colin, food is the theme again here!!

 The view from further back shows that Kate's pole will still find a home, even amongst the building! I will probably lose the red theme on the walls and see if a nice light feeling can permeate the room... at least til I get a red splashback!! hahah... more food!

A little more restful was the Porthcurno July view, slightly ringing the changes, the view from the top of the hill, a peaceful sea, we should have been boating perhaps!..this was just before the glorious weather began.

Ahh Jordan came out boating last week, she is going to be a great boater, learning lots from Colin and never afraid to get wet!  It was a good chance to grab a Mount View, this was about 7pm and the sun was still nice and warm

Annabelle is just fab.. she is smiling and reaching for things and doesn't answer back yet so she is Ross' favourite!!  We had the three girls last week for Lisa & Tom to get a meal out, she is just 25 and I am just so proud of her, a Mum to three lovely girls, working so hard to make their business a success and giving her girls so much fun and love too.



The sofa was full with us two and the girls, I really should use the decent camera instead of my phone, esp in the evenings, but the moments just happens! 


 I have the other sofa view too, Ross and April were great keeping the girls (and us) amused with old style TV via Ross' Apple TV .. Sesame Street, the Magic Roundabout and the Clangers!

 

Since last I wrote Zac has left for his next sea phase, he is out of Seattle for three months and off to Alaska each week, like a geography field trip for work! Glaciers everywhere!

Before he left he had a few days in Southampton for the naming ceremony of the new Royal Princess.. and as you can see his camera is much better than mine!..the Sky walk piece of the new ship lets you walk out 'over the sea' and it has a glass floor!


























Oh hello there!

But it hasn't just been Zac out with the paps.. Col and I went to Manchester mid June to see Robbie Williams, our Christmas gift from Lisa and Tom. I have really enjoyed planning the trip and while there we had a great time, saw some old friends, ate and drank lots and just chilled in grown-up fashion.

Ollie Murs was the support act and I just loved every minute of the stadium experience at ManCity / Ethihad.  Oh and my breakfast at the hotel should no go unmentioned..

When Ollie met Robbie..

Banana waffles of the MalMaison variety!

So now I am going to look at the calendar to see if there are any big events I have missed..of course July is a busy birthday month for us here..Ross turned 27, Lisa 25 and our gorgeous Lilly is 5 today..JB did them proud once again with Cake.. a Genoese sponge with raspberry / strawberry coulis and fresh fruit.
















It's amazing I have been blogging almost five years now as Lilly's birth and my Mum's passing a few months after really spurred me on to put fingers to keyboard and preserve the memory!  I have found it hard to settle into blogging and also scrapbooking the last few months, the house has been in turmoil with the building work and somehow it doesn't make me feel very organised to relax and do cerebral memory things.

I wonder too if maybe five years on I am coming out of the shadows, the worries that if I don't chronicle things for the family 'history' etc that it will pass unnoticed.. I don't know.  

Getting the room sorted and space again to work on some pictures will hopefully give me chance to finish some of the half started scrap projects for Zac and JB.. and anyway with Zac away I have to blog to keep him breast of the family news.

As a PS I have just looked back over the challenges that Lynne and Anne have set and I hope that maybe this post shows just how 'Lucky' I have been with such a busy lovely life and how I am still taking the pics even if I'm not posting every day! 

 I am not sure the life I have sounds very 'Relaxing' as Anne prompted in June but I am thoroughly chilled and when we can Col and I have been grabbing a few hours to lay about and even nipping away for a few days. It is quite strange but very therapeutic, my favourite relax is Sunday brunch in a little cafe in Torquay where there is a free jukebox and we play Pretty Woman by Roy Orbison and lots of other 60s stuff.  Yes, that's our relax, some 'old tunes' on the stereo and some great memories!

Reflect & enjoy..

Well on reflection (!) I have enjoyed the last weekend, so I shall look and see what bits really did it for me...

• getting some things tidied and clearing up jobs which needed doing for some time
• making plans for partying next week
• spending some nice time with the family
• eating good food
• eating and drinking outdoors in front of a fire
• great lazy time with feel good conversation
• feeling sunshine on your face and in your heart

So it seems like summer is almost here, the evenings are getting longer and lighter, it's just the warmer that we need now.  

Maybe Summer will be in May this year again...this is a layout I did two years ago saying as much ..

and last May also gave us a few great outdoor moments..

Vulnerable..draw on your reserves.

Over at Lucky Snapping here.. Anne has asked us what we do when we feel Vulnerable..

What do you do when you feel vulnerable, what do you eat, what do you say, how do you dress, whom do you talk to, what do you avoid doing, what do you do much more ?


Do you dress in bright colors, do you go clubbing, do you hibernate, do you go for long walks, do you cuddle your Teddy in your PJs all day, do you read a book, do you raid your local supermarket for chocolate, do you look at yourself in a mirror and do faces ?

We all have our own small things we do to try and feel better and I would like we share them with each other, as we never have too many ways of trying to feel better, do we ?

This week, we open a massive savings account ( at least one that won't go bust, LOL) and we all deposit our little secret remedies. At the end of the week, we all will feel richer and more prepared to fight grey days, would they come.

I like the idea Anne has of banking good feelings and suggestions for when we feel low and vulnerable. I don't think I have as many of these days as I did when I had teenagers, money worries and dependant elderly relatives...perhaps when I do have a low day I look back and remember what a really low day was... but I am also grateful for those experiences as they put today and other people's worries and problems into perspective..

Funny too, Col always liked a comment he heard on the radio, someone was asked the secret of a great marriage.. it's all about banking the love and  great feelings when you have them and drawing on them when life brings stresses and frustrations which may mean you don't get on so well.. I think we all have days when we have to draw on the love bank to make us feel like we love the other one as much as yesterday..
.. so I guess the vulnerable days can be counteracted by  bank of good vibes too?

I think ticking some boxes is one of my ways to get back on the horse.. get busy, clean up, tidy, put some order back in and see the fruits of my efforts.. (I am not hot on housework and have inherited from my Mum the enjoyment of a good tidy which can actually be noticed rather than being on the case all the time and never having a thing out of place..)

I have mentioned it before but cannot leave it out.. in the summer I love to top up my reserves with a trip 'out west', preferrably on the boat, but failing that just for a visit.  The granite of the cliffs out towards Land's End remind me how some things will always remain constant, like your history and where you really came from, where you feel you belong..it's like some kind of spiritual reserve.. knowing that when I am there it has hardly changed in 50 or 500 years..and that for me gives me a link to my past which was all too short..

 It's interesting that as I look through all my pictures I realise two things more.. that most of best ways to stock up is to go to the sea anywhere, in fact just recall days there, perhaps through revisiting my scrapbooks..



If I were a salmon this is where I would be heading..



Kuredu, memories of hot sunny evenings, always beside the sea..

I have one other way to lift the spirits.. but I am setting that now as a follow on for next week's challenge.. so see you there tomorrow!

Chasing my tail..Views and Laughs

Where did that week go.. STS was busy and I was running about with all kinds of family stuff..

Kate got herself a place for college next year, she is going to do beauty but may venture into Travel & Tourism later if she wants to go travel and work..ahh it all comes eventually. And of course we had to go do a bit of shopping afterwards.. 

Ross went to London on a school trip, he does good on these as he is the 'cool teacher' guy the kids like to have accompany them.  Yesterday I had the girls for Lisa to reorganise things at their house, little Lyla is still under the weather two weeks on from the start. She is perking up a bit but it's never easy having a babe that is poorly.

Col goes away for a few days next week but will manage tea with Zac tomorrow so that makes it seem much less like a trial!  He is sorting his van now while I write and we are going to have an hour in st Ives with a bite to eat to make the 'day before he goes' nicer.

I am so far back on the photos, I even forgot that I usually do a Mount view, but who knows, that may come later today..here for good measure are two of my owings..

Window view... can you see what I can see? Yes, a cement mixer just outside.. and you know what that means..

Ding dong the porch is dead! never to be seen again, our blimp on the back of our house is gone!  The builders are great , the concrete for the slab goes in this week and then some scaffolding up to allow them to work all weathers..haha, maybe that will give us good weather for six weeks because we are expecting rain to stop play!

If you compare the yard pictures you can also see the hard work Ross and his mate are putting into the trees and hedges, we are pretty overdue for a tidy up after ten years of letting everything just grow away..



Anne has challenged us to share some laughs this week..nice to lift the mood and share the things which tweak our own funny bones. 

When I think of laughs I had as a kid I remember being in a cafe in Babbacombe with my Mum, on a holiday staying at a B&B in Torquay. (I realise now that Mum must have worked hard, not only to save the money but to actually take a ten year old who was in between playing with dolls and being a teen on a week's holiday to the English Riviera in 1970!)

Well Mum, being a fisherman's widow knew there was rain coming before long so we headed for a cafe., and rain it did, stair-rods rain, you know the type. We sat and drank tea, watching the less weather-wise rush to get cover. One lady, I guess she was quite old, couldn't walk down the big stone steps with a flourish, she had to go one step at a time, you know, the way little old ladies do sometimes.. but imagine watching her do it, in a rush, as fast as she could to avoid the downpour which was well under way, one foot on step, next foot joins it, next step, next foot joins it.. sad but oh so funny when Mum and I realised we were both watching her.. we cried laughing but I think we didn't miss the point Mum said, that one day it would be her who would take those steps one at a time..awhh, we used to remind each other of it as the years went by.. lovely memories..

 As you know we love stand-up comedy and over the years we have seen lots of the more popular acts doing the circuit. With Dave showing Live at the Apollo almost on a loop and so many television shows having snippets of different routines there are some phrases which as a family we use now on a daily basis! 

Micky Flanagan does a piece about telling the careers teacher he wanted to drive a van.. to be told .. 'nah, no-one from this school ever left to drive a van, this school supplies people to carry stuff to the van...'  Col says this was like his school on the Wirral in the late 70's.

We love all his stuff about dating in the 80's, I guess because we were there...'if a girl wants a wine glass with a bed of lettuce with prawns on top, served with the sauce of a thousand island, then that's what she will get..a prawn cocktail'

I have tried to find a Micky Flanagan video you might like, but most of them include maybe bits you would cringe at.. so here is another classic sketch from Rhod Gilbert..we never tire of this story..he has ways of relating a story about the mundane and making it hilarious.

... oh and as I browse youtube, I just have to share this, Rhod Gilbert did 'Work Experience' as a farmer.. will surely appeal to Janice way up there on her farm..

... and lastly here is my Mount view for March, nice to see some people out and about.. and the pockets of blue sky..

Impossible not to..love the view!

..and impossible not to appreciate the bright blue skies, the gorgeous much-missed sunshine and the blustery winds as we went out west today!   After the grim, grey week both weatherwise and in my body and soul it was fantastic to blow the grey cobwebs out and enjoy these scenes at Porthcurno.

My faith in camera phones was restored when I looked at these, I bemoan the phone for it's impossibly rubbish camera but really I ask too much of it to work indoors in a not well lit house. Like me, give the phone some sunshine and good vibrations and it comes good! ;-)

Those who know me will notice that I have included a gorgeous little springer spaniel doing what they do best; chasing sand, running for all they are worth and getting good and deep to ensure the spaniel aroma is on max-setting when they get in the car!  Three more of them arrived together just as we were leaving.. crazy dogs, they launch themselves off the cliffs with a leap of faith / stupidity that usually comes good, quite simply they are energy on legs, in my experience the more you walked them, the farther they would run! xx

The cobalt blue sky as we left the church having taken flowers for Dad (91 yesterday).

Col remarked on the simple vapour trail of the plane and pondered on the conversations taking place above us.. champagne in First Class, just cruising over Land's End etc..

Certainly I topped up my levels today..and red pepper soup at the Logan Rock beside a log fire was the perfect end to the trip out..xx


Oh and here, somewhat belated is my February visit to Porthcurno for 'the View'

February



 

January

...still quite barren from a growth point of view but much brighter and rougher today than in January..

'The' Impossible..

I was just googling the word to see if it threw up some more inspiration for Anne's prompt. How could I have forgotten? 

Two weeks ago Col and I went to see the film 'The Impossible'; it is based on the true story of a family who like many others were caught up in the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami.  I think the title is kind of strange because it doesn't really tell or remind people what the film is about, depsite being quite descriptive, so I have found many people have not heard of it, let alone seen it.

We have a kind of close feeling about the events as we had just been on our first family holiday to the Maldives, taking all the kids away for the first time since they had become 'handle-able' so to speak!   I wrote about the holiday in my serendipity post here. We had been home a couple of days and celebrated Christmas before being rooted to the TV all day Boxing Day as the events unfolded, and unfolded some more. 

The film is very good. Yes, it obviously has some CGI, how else would they portray the events of the day, but it is very believeable and you never feel like you are watching something made to 'entertain' you, which I also like because how could you if so many were lost. ( I just found this which just shows how the director was aware of this too..this. )

What made me really think was how damaging just being in the huge swell of water must have been as the flow got underway. You imagine being in a big surf and that, for me, not being keen to get my head fully under water, is bad enough, but the film makes you realise how the water is soon carrying trees, cars, gates, windows, anything in its path.   The scenes reminded me of the opening scenes of Private Ryan, where the bullets could be seen and heard piercing through the water...  conjuring images and sounds you had not quite imagined but once seen, the realisation of how awful was quite apparent ....so very poignant and very, very memorable, and I'm not one for being able to relive film scenes...

Dear Kate, she also went to see the film, after us, her chap said he still hasn't seen it.. as he spent the whole film consoling her. She said it made her cry from the start, when the family were on the plane to the holiday.. poor hunnie, sometimes you feel sad inside and a film just nudges you doesn't it...x

Impossible?...yes, on reflection!

Well over at Lucky Snapping Anne has asked us to reflect on something which seemed like an impossible task.. Just over here!

I was a little late getting my views posted for week 1 of February and you may have missed it, I'm not sure, but it is here, I promise.. oh, yes, well.. it's here..! 

And now here I am on Thursday wondering about 'the impossible' .. but worrying that I am starting to be late with my posts all the time... ahh being late!...can you see the thoughts growing?....that's me.... always almost late.... and consequently that makes 'being on time'.. impossible!    Maybe it was because I was over two weeks late being born, it continued then when I had all my brood, Ross was two weeks late and the others all a good few days.  The concept of having a baby early did not come into it.

It's not that I am very late, in fact sometimes I am even running on time, or perhaps a little comfortably early.. but that means there is an extra few minutes to ... dry my hair, nip back indoors to collect something, do the dishes before I leave.. or most probably just lie in bed the extra few moments which will start off the lateness before the chance of a rogue moment of earliness is even allowed to peek..

When Col & I married we drove in our car to the Registry Office, we got there after our friends.. and that's not really fashionable at that kind of wedding. The children have grown to expect it, they have a kind of 'Mum's timing' thing going on, take the time I said and add ten minutes, so you see, it's not that late, not hours, just fashionably not on time!  ;-)

Going back to 'impossible' I have given this a little thought. I don't think I think of things happening that had 'impossible' feelings at the outset, I guess I wouldn't even embark on something if I felt like that about it... oh, but when it's done, when I am sitting here pondering back over things, so so many things we have done look NOW like they must have seemed impossible.

In 1997 we were parents to five children under 12, the baby (Kate) was three months old and we had been quietly thinking of moving house. Col was working on civils dive work which had become very weather sensitive and every job had to be a success, he was looking to do something else...we needed somewhere he could have workshops and have some scope..

Col's folks were interested in buying somewhere with us, a place of their own but alongside us, to be good for us at that time and good for them later when maybe they would need us.  We had looked at one place, a farm with farmshop on quite a busy road, it was okay, food for thought, but it was digested and spat out as not the one!  

A few weeks later I saw the details of a old ivy covered farmhouse with lots of outbuildings and 9 acres of land.  We went out to drive past it, we had only been through the village a few times before, but we were pleased to see it was at the start of a lane just on the edge of the village, so it was good for a wander to the shop, but not too far for the kids that they couldn't go on their own.  It was only five miles from where we were and we ... well I.. fell in love. I think Col saw the potential too of course, probably from a getting away from the crowds point of view (the place we lived in at the time was getting a bit built up)... so we showed some friends and our folks.. 

Gran's annexe will go here!

The front garden with it's very mature rose bushes and monkey puzzle tree was just fabulous, many a child could be reared there ... little did I know that the front path would be dug up for new water and power supplies, that the roses would be taken up as they were so mature the thorns were like wooden spears, not child friendly at all!  Only that monkey puzzle really survived the practical ideas Col had to make the place easy to maintain, gone were my secluded Victorian pathways and overgrown hedges.. but I'm cool..

The house was.. a disaster.. wallpaper peeling off the walls, asbestos panels to remove, a fire damaged floor, no plumbing or heating in the main house and that was just the obvious stuff!

But we quite fancied it.. there were two barns, one for his folks... and.. hey wait a minute.. if we move I will still spend a lot of time toing and froing to my own Mum.. lets get her to come too!! So she did! To be fair she had a nice bungalow in our old village and would probably have been fine there for a few more years, but it was going to be easier if she came along....

.. so they came along.. us 7, Col's M&D and my Mum. We sold our houses and rented a 4-bed bungalow for three months while we did a gut and make-liveable job on the 'big house' as Col's Mum named it.  Ahhh and here's the rub.. Mum and his folks got caravans and lived in them in the field alongside the barn for up to two years before they moved into their places...summer 2000 Mum moved into her annexe and we were finally all sorted, ...well it's still a work in progress but aren't most homes. 

Where the workshop joined the barn (his folk's house!)

The story goes that Jean and my Mum used to sit in the caravans over in the field, looking back at the delapidated farm buildings, big digger trucks, old farm detritis and so much work that needed doing and they would ask each other just what we had done..!! 

I think they thought it was an impossble task.. but like us they must have not really thought so because they came on the journey too.. takes quite a person to live in a caravan for almost two years when you are in your 70's, especially by choice! 



Caravans just on the right in the field!

But those days of kids playing in building sand and Kate (with two bottles, one in her mouth and one in her pocket) crawling across the wooden planks to Jean's caravan are all the things memories are made of.. just like the impossible tasks!

I must just add here one of Colin's favourite quotes ..

'If at first you don't succeed.. get bigger kit!'

We were storing this big swingshovel at the time and got to use it for the demolition work.. only trouble was it had some faults, it had an inclination to swing to the left, so you had to be careful you didn't wipe out a building when just trying to make 'improvements' !!!

Serendipity..?

Just in case you have just fallen upon my blog, I am part of the LuckySnappingin2013 challenge which is happening over here and this week Anne has asked up to keep an eye or ear open for ...Serendipitous moments!  (and by the way, the challenge is great so far, expanding on our chat and exploring our lives, or homes and our ..heads!)

So.. to Serendipity..
I think the first time I really heard this word was in Sri Lanka in 1982 when I spent almost 4 weeks there travelling about. I went with a boyfriend (later to be my first husband, Ross & Lisa's Dad); I had just finished Uni and had worked the season in a hotel to save up.  Funny really, it must have been a bit like when kids go travelling now, but it wasn't quite backpacking. We travelled cheap on minibuses and third class trains but wanted to stay in nicer accomodation than you would expect students to stay in....he was working so he didn't really get the student thing (he never did really, even when I was studying... I think it is how offshore workers regarded tax dodging 'students' (in the voice of the Hardware cast..if you ever saw that series!) ) and really it was just an extended holiday.

Well the word was used to descibe the whole island, like a jewel dropped into the ocean just off India, the gorgeous sun and the blue blue seas and that lush vegetation... you can imagine it was an amazing unexpected discovery for many as the found the island for the first time...

..this is what I found on Wikipaedia ...  
The name stems from Serendip, an old name for Sri Lanka (aka Ceylon),  Serendipity means a "happy accident" or "pleasant surprise"; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful while not specifically searching for it. The word has been voted one of the ten English words hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company.^[1] However, due to its sociological use, the word has been exported into many other languages.

  Many years later in 2004 I had a similar but stronger feeling when we visited Kuramathi for the first time.  Life with five children, grandparents to think about and a business to run had been quite hectic and at last we had taken a holiday away, just us and the kids. Now two of them were teens and not home too much, not very chatty and plenty of fetching and carrying..... one of them even came home about an hour before we left for the airport!

So there we were, heading for a remote island, no teen taxi calls, no cooking, no driving, no work demands to juggle with the school run or teatime... we walked off the boat onto a baking hot wooden jetty and all we had imagined disappeared with the reality of it being there, right in front of us, stepping into the postcard paradise for real!!!

The overwhelming heat, the intense bright sunshine and oh that crystal water and fish you had only seen in miniature in a fishtank shop.....all naturally ocurring and ours for two whole weeks.

I was speechless, almost tearful at the relief of the change in routine, the escape from the stresses we had built up over about five years of hard slog... and an hour later as I stood in the shade of the palm trees and subconsciously counted each of my children, ticking off the virtual boxes in my mind as I must have done daily for many years (and for sure I still do.. just logging in my head where every one of them is.. this week it is when I have missed our Zac, noting as I come downstairs each morning that he is not in his room, that the door is open again all night..)
.. that moment seeing all my children together swimming, in one place, no demands, nothing to make us leave the moment.. that was and is still is a serendipity moment for me.

But, back to the reality of mizzley Cornish January (to be fair there have been pockets of blue sky, but not pockets you could store many handfuls of pebbles in mind you)...how has today given me some (not quite so momentous ) but still nicely warming moments?... I shall list them..

• ..the Tremeloes singing 'Silence is Golden' as I drove to collect Kate.
• ..buying a meal for two for ten pounds at M&S, adding veg and ice cream and stretching it to feed three, almost four and feeling like we were having a real treat!
• .. spending the evening with the kids, JB making jewelry (will her creativity just sit still for one!), Kate exercising and showing me snippets of a nice routine combining the pole exercise with old gym and acrobatics, Ross just hanging out.. and doing the dishes (ohh the pleasure that gave me!)
• ..watching a part of David Attenborough's Africa where an elephant mother refused to leave her dying calf, being glad we were human and that someone invented penicillin
• ..and last night watching the opening episodes of Gavin & Stacey with two kids who like it too and no husband who is only watching it because he knows I just love it! (sweet guy x)
• ...oh and having a lovely comment about my ramblings from my pal Yvonne... thank you hun x

Here are the Tremeloes for those who may love that memory too.. it was probably one of the first songs I loved, my brother being eleven years older was well into pop and I was only six.. 

We used to have to put his radio on the pelmet to get a decent reception .. and if his favourites came on I would bang on the wall under his bedroom to let him know.. sad, but true.. wonder if he remembers.. always the kid sister huh! xx