December and The Annual Reading List

I’d like to start by wishing you a Happy New Year. Here we are in 2025 and who knows what that might bring but as ever I’m hoping for better things.

 

I did have a round up post for October pretty much ready to go and had already had thoughts for the November round up but as ever life conspired against me. 

To put it simply, Himself has been waiting for a date for some major surgery since September, which has meant not really planning anything new, whilst also trying to carry on as normal until the date came through. After the window of time the hospital had given had been and gone, Himself started gently pestering and finally got a date for the 10th December. A couple of weeks later that got postponed, but thankfully only by one day, to the 11th. So we did our Christmas shopping, and card writing, and all that other stuff early and I tried not to worry too much. Ha.

 There was a pre-op three weeks or so before which went well, it was then just a case of trying to keep Himself well and praying the date didn’t get cancelled again. 

We had one delightful final blow out on the 30th November when our friends Dan and Melissa invited us and three other close friends to dinner. It was such a lovely evening, with fabulous food and wonderful company. I don’t think we stopped laughing from the moment we stepped through the door. Just what was needed.

 

Once we realised the date wasn’t going to come through by the end of October we did decide to have a short break in Bristol for our anniversary. We were going to stay at the Premier Inn, but then I found a deal for the Marriot on College Green that was only slightly more expensive, so we decided to go there instead. What a cracking decision that was! (Wallace and Gromit reference there) 

When we got to our room, we were convinced there had been some sort of error, but no we had been checked into a suite! 

I swear it was bigger than the whole downstairs of our house!! Absolute bliss. 

The view from our window, not too shabby at all. For some reason I was singing Vienna by Ultravox after looking at this view.

We had no plans and just wandered about reacquainting ourselves with the city. Himself had booked a table in a highly recommended little Italian restaurant for dinner where we had a delicious though speedy meal, I’m not sure if their service is always that quick but it would have been nice to have eaten at a more leisurely pace. That was my only niggle though and we would definitely go there again if we were in town. Finding ourselves back outside with more time that we expected we headed to The Gryphon pub and ended up staying there for the rest of the night due to the magnificent old school heavy metal playlist and very decent beer.

The next day we took ourselves off to Clifton, where after the obligatory walk along the suspension bridge we just took an amble about. I was surprised to spot a huge Jolly Roger flag hanging in a charity shop. I called Himself back to see it and of course I went in and bought it! The lady at the till said somewhat doubtfully “It is £5” when I asked if I could buy it. I couldn’t hand my money over fast enough. My plan was to use it to adorn the wall in the downstairs toilet, but it turns out it is actually way too big, so it’s currently draped in the passageway leading to said toilet until I find the ideal place for it, and I will. There was some amazing street art around the city.

and we even got to catch some being created

It was a lovely couple of days.

On the 11th December we had to present ourselves to the hospital at 7am so my brother very kindly gave us a lift before heading off to work. I have to say once they started, the processing happened pretty quickly with no one seemingly quite able to believe that Himself didn’t have any pre-existing conditions, didn’t take any medication and had no allergies. 

I got to meet the anaesthetist and the registrar as well as the consultant who would be performing the surgery. The later reassuringly being one of the top 2 in the country in his field, which was the reason we had to wait so long for a date.  

By about 8.30am Himself was being wheeled off to be knocked out and I was waiting to catch a bus back into Oxford.  

I had been due to have lunch with my friends Simon, Carole and Liz, and at first, I did dither about cancelling but knowing I would only have climbed the walls at home waiting for news, and on Himself’s suggestion I kept the appointment. It was a good move because their company certainly helped keep my mind off things.

After a lovely meal in our local Italian I headed down to the station with Carole and saw her onto the train towards Reading, whilst I caught the one to Oxford. 

As the surgery was scheduled to take 3-4 hours and the hospital stay was due to be 2 days, I fully anticipating Himself to be out of recovery and ready on the ward by the time I got there. It was just before 5pm as I was walking through the city centre trying to figure out which bus-stop I needed when my phone rang. It was the registrar to say the surgery had been more complicated than expected and they had only just finished.

Let’s just say this wasn’t the only complication, indeed as I have told people since this is the most dramatic Himself has been in all the years I have known him! Not only was the surgery 5 hours longer than expected, he then decided to go into shock that night. Once stabilized and on the ward, not only would his drain not play ball, he also got a fever so had to have IV antibiotics and stay in hospital for 8 days. By which point he was champing at the bit to come home, and I was utterly frazzled from working full time, travelling to and from the hospital every day, which took up to 2 hours each way depending on buses and trains, then the round of messages and calls to family and friends once I got home. Not to mention the stress of it all, it’s certainly been a crazy few months.  

Thankfully, just in time for Christmas he was home, with the first task being to shove all his hospital smelling clothes into the wash and tape a plastic bag over his various holes so he could have a shower! (thankfully they were able to do keyhole, so the recovery time is shorter.)

I managed to nip out for a quick lunch with Charlotte to exchange pressies, and Soo popped round here to say hello to the invalid and drop off and pick up pressies. 

By Christmas Eve he was well enough for me to leave him for a few hours to go round to my brother’s for a few festive nibbles and prosecco as they were due to be away over Christmas. Mum drove me home and chatted with Himself whilst I loaded up the car and we headed home with her for a few days. I’m not going to lie it was wonderful to be spoilt for a few days.

Nephew Number One and his Fiancée came over on Christmas day evening and also stayed the night. Not only did they get engaged on his 30th in October, they are also now proud cat parents to a gorgeous 8year old rescue kitty called Maisie.

We had a lovely chilled evening eating and drinking and watching Gavin and Stacey, the nephew and I are both huge fans.

 

Himself and I have been taking gentle strolls every day so by Friday he felt able to accompany Mum and I to Thame for a slow walk up one side of the high street and back down the other, stopping for a sit down and a coffee, before grabbing some groceries and heading home. 

The horrible fog that had been blanketing most of the country started to settle down our way too so we pretty much just unloaded Mum’s food shop, loaded our bags in and Mum drove us home before it got dark.

 

We spent the rest of the Christmas break quietly. Still walking every day and slowly building up the distance until Himself is now up to 3-4 miles though at a speed of about a third of his usual pace. His stitches have pretty much all fallen out and other than having to inject blood thinners every day for another few weeks he’s doing really well. He will be back to work next Thursday though at reduced hours. They said it will take 4-6 weeks to come back with the results of the lesion they removed from his kidney and then we will know next steps.

 

I had hoped 2024 was going to be a better year but there you go, maybe 2025 might be a bit kinder than the last 2 years, I have everything crossed…

 

I’m going to finish up with my usual round up of my reading list for 2024. You may or may not recall that I started 2024 stating I was going to a) try to buy less books, b) get rid of the ones I didn’t enjoy or would never read again and c) aim to read my bookshelves. I had books that have moved with me four times now, and have either not been read in the intervening years, or at all.

Well, the first part of my declaration has been a monumentally epic fail! I may even have bought more books this year than in any previous year I can think of – oops. 

The second part I can confirm I have stuck to religiously. Many trips have been made to either a local charity shop, the book shelves at the station, or Oxfam Book Shop in Oxford with the more worthy/valuable tomes. 

The final part has been mostly successful. I have read many books from my bookshelves, got rid of quite a few, discovered some old friends, Maeve I’m looking at you, but possible not read as many as I had hoped I would. I had other new purchases to be reading. 

Anyway below are the books I read in 2024 and my ratings for Goodreads where I shelve my list.

For the first time in all the years I have been using the rating system I actually managed to give a book a 0! 

That was Barbara Cartland’s autobiographical We Danced All Night. 

After Kate Atkinson said it had been hugely useful resource when she wrote The Shrines of Gaiety, I decided to give it a read and found a copy on Ebay. I’m genuinely at a loss to understand how, it is so badly written it’s practically unreadable, I wondered if she was being ironic/joking?

The Patricia Wendorf books were a prime example of ones I’ve moved with me several times. I seem to recall really enjoying them at the time but have never read them since, I can only imagine this is another example of how my reading taste has changed and evolved over the years as I had to plough doggedly through them and gratefully stuck them in the charity bag once done. 

Similarly, the early Lisa Jewell books. I have always enjoyed her books and will snap up her latest as soon as it comes out in paperback, but I had never gone back to the very early ones where her focus was very much light chick lit, rather than the dark psychological thrillers she is more known for now. Apart from a couple which I did keep the rest also hit the charity bag. 

I picked up Maeve Binchey with some trepidation as her books really are my not so guilty pleasure. Would a re-read of some of the early books also let me down? 

Thankfully not, they are still an absolute delight to read, and whilst I did pass on the knackered old charity shopped copies of some, it was not before I had ordered new copies. I also bought a couple that I was missing so I now have a complete set which gives me great joy.   

2024 was the year my favourite author Kate Morton brought out a new book and it didn’t disappoint. That was my flight to New York treat. I love to save a special book when I know I have a long-haul flight so I can spend a delicious uninterrupted 8 hours reading. 

My in New York purchase was 'Fifth Avenue, 5am'. I spotted it in the book shop in the New York library and treated myself. No regrets I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Apart from the Elly Griffiths and Richard Osman books which I will always buy hot off the press, all the other books I gave a 4 were ones I spotted on offer from one of the two book clubs I’m part of. 

Women Vs Hollywood was a fascinating read and Cake: A Slice of British Life was an absolute joy.

 

So my reading resolutions for 2025, I give myself permission to go on buying books as and when, because heck life is tough and they give me joy, but only on the proviso I continue to move on the ones that I know I will never look at again. 

I think this year I also need to give myself permission to give up on bad books. Life is too short to read a bad book when there are so many other good ones clamouring for my attention.

 

Favourite book type quote for 2024. A publishing house asked on Twitter/X for ideas for a vampire novel. In my opinion the best by far was “ A woman deliberately gets bitten by a vampire so she can live forever and finally get through her To Read pile”    

  

My Christmas gift book pile, followed by

my first pile of book purchases for 2025!

       

Larksleve - Patricia Wendorf 2

Blanche  - Patricia Wendorf 2

The Cove - L J Ross 2

Bye Bye Blackbird - Patricia Wendorf 2

Light a Penny Candle - Maeve Binchey 4

One Hit Wonder - Lisa Jewell 3

Thirtynothing - Lisa Jewell 1

Homecoming - Kate Morton 4

Fifth Avenue, 5am : Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's and the Dawn of the Modern Wonman - Sam Wasson 4

31 Dream Street - Lisa Jewell 2

Ticket to Ride : Around the World in 49 Unusual Train Journeys - Tom Chesshyre 3

The Hidden Years  - Rachel Hore 2

Full House - Maeve Binchey 3

Evening Class - Maeve Binchey 4

Quentins - Maeve Binchey 3

Vince and Joy - Lisa Jewell 2

George Michael : The Biography - Rob Jovanovic 2

A Friend of the Family - Lisa Jewell 3

Letters of Note : Cats - Shaun Usher 2

The Last Devil to Die - Richard Osman 4

Pirates and Privateers in the 18th Centuary : The Final Flourish - Mike Rendell 3

Capote's Women : A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era - Laurence Leamer 3

The Glass Lake - Maeve Binchey  4

Women vs Hollywood : The Fall and Rise of Women in Film - Helen O'Hara 4

The Ghost Ship - Kate Mosse 3

Seasons at Highclere: Gardening, Growing and Cooking Through the Year at The Real Downton Abbey - Fiona Carnarvon 2

Star Sullivan - Maeve Binchey 2

The General History of the Lives, Murders and Adventures of the Most Notorious Pirates - Charles Johnson 2

The Return Journey : Stories - Maeve Binchey 3

A General History of the Robberies and Murders of The Most Notorious Pirates - Charles Johnson 2

The Blue Bedroom - Posamund Pilcher 2

Flowers in the Rain and Other Stories - Rosamund Pilcher 3

A Place Like Home - Rosamund Pilcher 2

Sherlocks Sisters : Stories From the Golden Age of Detective Fiction - Nick Rennison 4

Sleeping Tiger - Rosamund Pilcher 2

Coasts - Ruth Binney 4

A Notable Woman : The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt - Jean Lucey Pratt 2

The Great Deceiver - Elly Griffiths 4

The Last Word - Elly Griffiths 3

A Week in Winter - Maeve Binchey 3

Women in War - Lucy Fisher 3

Shrines of Gaiety - Kate Atkinson 3

The Midnight House - Amanda Geard 2

We Danced All Night - Barbara Cartland 0

The Man in Black and Other Stories - Elly Griffiths 3

The Women Behind the Few: The Women's Auxiliary Air Force and British Intelligence During the Second World War - Sarah-Louise Miller 3

Cake: A Slice of British Life - Andrew Baker 4

The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder - C. L. Miller 2

And it Happened on Beaumont Street - Various 1

The Travelling Cat Chronicles - Hiro Arikawa 2

At Christmas we Feast - Annie Grey 3

A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs - Ellis Peters 3

  

September - A Review.

 As usually we headed to Bournemouth for a long weekend in early September but first I had a work event in London. It took place in the Oxford and Cambridge Club, the imaginatively named members club for both universities. 

I met 4 of my colleagues at Paddington before we took the underground to Piccadilly and walked to the club via Regent's Street. It was a roasting hot day and the rain they threatened never came so it ended up a very sticky evening. I have to say our first impressios of the place just cemented all the bad things you hear about Oxbridge being stuck up, elitist and full of themselves. 

The club has a strict dress code which we had all adhered to, but the person on reception could hardly bring herself to let us in. We were filming the evening to make some promotional videos and lord only knows what the film crew thought because the staff who were meant to be helping were hostile to the point of being obstructive, and yes we had paid a wedge of money to host the event there!

It was a beautiful setting, but I've never had to do registration and apologise to each person as they arrived for the way the staff at the venue spoke to them on arrival, believe me, we gave some very honest feedback afterwards...

The food was amazing and all in all the event went well. At the end a very charming man (yes there was at least one nice person there) gave us a tour of the whole building which was fascinating.

This is the ladies room, I loved the ceiling. 

It was a long night and I got home about 12.30pm. Luckily I had the next day off as our holiday started then so could have a lie-in. 

We headed off to Bournemouth the next day. As anyone who reads my blog knows we have been going for many years now in September and I have to say we have been really blessed when it comes to the weather. Apart from the odd wet day here and there we have always had gorgeous weather. So I guess we were due a bad year. 

As I said to my Mum when we got back, it wasn't a case of wet or dry, more levels of wetness. It basically went from drizzle to torrential and everything in between but it never actually stopped.

We tried a new hotel on our favourite East Cliff side of Bournemouth. It had great reviews on Tripadvisor & Booking.com, but turned out to have been on The Hotel Inspector TV show. I had already booked our stay when we found this out so we quickly downloaded the episode to watch in some trepidation. Thankfully it came out of it well. 

The room was fine, one downside was it overlooked the fairly busy road but luckily it had a fan in the wardrobe so we got that out and had it on at night and slept with the window shut. It was randomly very hot still, even though it was so wet. 

The only other issue was the size of the shower, which was so small you didn't so much get in it as put it on. This made washing your hair a challenge and meant you could only sort of shuffle around. I dropped my shower gel and couldn't pick it up until I opened the door and stepped out!

In theory the hotel was only a 15 minute walk from the station so Himself insisted we walk, I had suggested jumping in a cab as it was raining. Of course about 10 minutes into the walk it went from fairly heavy to torrential. We arrived looking like a pair of drowned rats despite our umbrellas.

Once we had checked in, unpacked and put on some dry clothes and footwear, we headed out. Thankfully it was now only drizzling so we walked down to the beach and mooched towards Poole.

There had been torrential downpours before we arrived and the water was still flowing down the chines onto the beach. For all the years I have been going I had no idea there was this brickwork at the edge of the beach, it's usually covered in sand!

The rain began to get heavier so we turned around and headed back. Usually we buy chips to eat on the beach on our first night, but it was pouring down by the time we got to the pier so instead we went inside the restaurant at Harry Ramsden's and ate them there. In my case with an absolutely delicious piece of haddock.

The next morning we had a full breakfast courtesy of the hotel breakfast buffet which was delicious and a treat. I rarely eat a cooked breakfast. I don't eat sausages and have to be in the mood for bacon, it was nice to be able to help yourself so I could just have egg, tomato, mushrooms & potato with a cheeky piece of fried bread. Genuinely can't remember the last time I ate fried bread! It was nice as a one off.

Repleat we set out into the rain to have a look around the town centre before catching the bus over to Poole. We spent the day mooching around Poole taking shelter in a cafe when the rain got too heavy. We headed back about 5.30pm to get chaged for dinner. 

I usually meet my friend Alison for a day out, but this year she and her husband had something on, so we all met for dinner instead. We randomly co-incided, us walking up the hill from the town, and them walking down it from the carpark at the top. 

They have just moved house so we caught up on news and admired pictures of the 7, yes 7 sheds they are now the proud owners of. Why anyone would need 7 sheds was a mystery to us all, but the previous owner of their house clearly was that anyone, even if he did then leave them all behind when he moved out. 

We ate delicious Italian food and ended up being the last people in the restaurant, only realising it was time to leave as they were clearing up and closing down around us!

The next day Himself and I walked in the rain to the train station and caught the train to Dorchester. I had heard it was meant to be lovely, and it was also the home town of our late friend Murray, so we thought we'd give it a visit. 

The train station is near what was an old brewery which has since been redeveloped into shops, restaurants and bars. We had a look around a couple of the shops there before walking to the town centre.I just had to buy some tomatoes from this amazing display. 

I love tomatoes and I will confess there were none left by the time I got back to the hotel. I just kept snacking on them all day like a bag of sweets!

It rained so relentlessly we gave up trying to walk along by the river or going to see the iron age hill fort. The museum was surprisingly expensive at £15 a head so we gave that a miss too. In the end we found a pub near the station where we raised a pint in Murray's honour and watched a group of absolutely drenched walkers, who has visited the hill fort, come in trail puddles of water everywhere and leave again. 

Once back in Bournemouth we had something to eat in the Harvester on the beach at Durley Chine, then walked up to The Anvil bar and club for a drink as they have a great rock & metal jukebox. We knew there was a Blink 182 cover band on donwstairs there that night, which we hadn't planned to go and see, but in the end we did. They were great fun and did 2 sets, the second being 90's covers which included Bowling For Soup and Rage Against The Machine so we were both happy. 

We went back upstairs to find a DJ had set up so we sat drinking beer and in my case singing along until an extremely drunk Glaswegian chef latched on to us so we decided it was time to leave. It turned out to be 1.30am so probably not a bad thing.

It was still raining when we headed home the next day so it was nice to get home and have a hot shower with room to move!

I was back at work for a couple of weeks then I had another day off this time to visit Kelmscott Manor with Soo, and her friend Gina (who I know from when I used to work at the Bodleian Library.) Gina had never been and whilst Soo and I have been there together before,  we were trying to remember exactly how long ago. Then Facebook did it's memories thing and apparently it was 10 years ago. Wow where did that time go??

Kelmscott was the home of William Morris from 1871 until his death, his widow Jane Morris continued to live there with his daughters. His daughter May bequithed the house to the University of Oxford providing they used it to house upcoming artists. According to one of the guides the problem was she also refused to let them update the house so with no electricity or running water noone really wanted to live there and in the end it was sold. It is now run by the Society of  Antiquaries. There were major refurbishments done recently and the manor reopened in 2022, so we were interested to see what was new.

We parked at Buscot and walked across the fields to Kelmscott. We were armed with waterproof as the weather was meant to be stormy with torrential downpours. Thankfully it was dry for the walk there.

Sadly there was no photography allowed inside though I did manage to sneak a couple of pics. 

There were guides in every room so that wasn't easy. One of them seemed to take am liking to Soo and basically talked at us, we were finally able to escape when another member of staff came to ask him something, good job really we would probably still be there now otherwise!  

It was fascinating to see the attic space which is now open and used for exhibitions, the beams were beautiful.I know they have pretty much all been replaced over the years as the house fell into disrepair. 

After we have finished in the house we looked around the outhouses, the wash house was amazing, then the gardens which were lovely.

By this time we were all hungry so headed to the cafe. We ordered and were going to sit outside but ominous rumblings started so we decamped to the only free table left inside.

Not a moment too soon. The heavens opened and the most incredible thunder storm with hail and torrential rain. 

No one gets between an Englishman and his cigerette and cup of tea!

Very soon the courtyard was completley flooded and I heard one of the staff come in to say the offices had flooded and they were mopping up in the shop when we looked in there.

And just like that it was over.

The walk back along the river was gorgeous though the skies were starting to look like they might not quite have finished after all.

I did love these hay bales that looked like giant humbugs.

All in all a lovely day out. 

 

An August Round Up.

The first weekend in August saw us going for a couple of walks one quite late on Saturday because we had had a very lazy day at home. I took a picture of these collared doves because they are birds I love. 

We had a pair nest in the garden of our previous house every year and I loved the way they were always cosied up together. 

It seems our old landlord had every tree, bush and all the ivy cut down which must have been such a shock to all the resident birds, he also had all the flowerbeds dug out and then grassed everything over. If I had known that I would have taken more with me when I left. It absolutely broke my heart to see it.

 

Sunday’s walk was a blissful amble between a couple of nearby villages. There were loads of blackberries out already so I was telling himself how my Mum used to make bramble jelly every year which he had never had. 

In the evening he was off to the cinema as they had started something called Star Wars Sunday, basically they are showing all the Star wars films in order over 10 weeks, and yes he’s going to them all.

 

On Monday I had the day off to meet up with Charlotte for some belated birthday fun. I caught the bus over to Charlbury where she met me at the station in her car and we drove over to Burford for the day. We parked at Burford Garden Centre where we had a mooch and bought a couple of bits which we popped into the car before walking into Burford itself. I loved that they have all these old pieces dotted around, the sign on this coach did make me laugh. I can so relate. 

We went for lunch at Huffkins before a wander around the town and into any shops that took our fancy. 

We headed back to the garden centre late afternoon for a cup of tea and piece of cake. Charlotte then dropped me off at the train station in Charlbury where I had another train journey complete with an unwieldy plant! It does seem such a good idea at the time when I buy these things, I really need to start thinking about how I get them home!

 

Saturday the 10th we got up and went blackberry picking, something I haven’t really done since I was a kid because whilst I love the flavour of blackberries I hate all the pips so never eat them now. After seeing so many rip ones last week I had messaged my Mum to ask if she still had all her jam making stuff and if so, did she fancy making some bramble jelly! She answered in the affirmative and I knew I was going to see her on the 11th at my brother’s. 

I don’t know whether it was all the rain this year but the fruits were huge and before we knew it we had picked 2 bags of blackberries and some bonus wild plums. We walked home via Sainsburys to buy some jam making sugar. Weighing our booty when we got in we discovered we had picked 6 kilos of berries!

 

Later that afternoon we went out for another walk as Himself had discovered a new to us footpath. It went through a new housing estate and next to them were some fields. We were surprised to see them full of grape vines. 

We could have been in the South of France not the outskirts of a (constantly growing) urban town.  

 

On Sunday we headed over to my brother’s early afternoon for a family catch up and to test out the new barbeque he had treated himself too. 

It was a lovely afternoon sitting out on their new decking, enjoying the sun and admiring their finally finished garden. We got home that evening and Himself headed off to the cinema so I sat out to watch the Perseids meteor shower. 

As the 12th was meant to be when the shower was at its peak, we both lay out in the garden loungers for a couple of hours watching in awe. 

Even with the amount of light pollution here it was an amazing show with an incredible mixture of slow moving and fast streaking meteors lighting up the sky. Of course we both then had to discuss the 1970’s TV series Day of the Triffids

luckily we both woke up the next day able to see and not overrun by giant walking plants!

 

My Mum messaged me to send me pictures of jam in progress 

and to tell me my cousin’s daughter Chiara had called to ask if she could come and stay the next day for a very last-minute flying visit. 

It was so last minute I think she ended up going with Mum to all her various clubs and activities as Mum hadn’t had time to cancel them. Seriously my Mum is busier now than she ever was when she worked, I swear she is literally never at home! 

I can only hope I get to enjoy the same lifestyle when (if ever) I finally get to retire.  

The pair of them also popped in here on the Wednesday afternoon for a cup of tea as I was working from home that day. It was lovely to see Chiara again and catch up on all the news. It turned out she had had a crazy journey to get here from Heathrow, accidentally ending up on the Elizabeth line to London. This meant then getting a train back out of London to Oxford and bus from there to Mum’s village. Whilst they were here we looked up the airline coach timetable which got her back to Heathrow the next day in a third of the time.

 

The 16th spelled boiler dramas, and quite scary ones at that. It started with a guy coming out to do the annual gas safety inspection. Randomly the boiler in this house is in a cupboard in the living room because that is where the original teeny tiny kitchen was. We actually went to see one of these houses that hadn't had a kitchen extension and the kitchen's were so small you could literally touch the walls whichever way you stood!

 

So I was sitting in the kitchen working as the gas engineer did the needful. The minute he took the cover off the boiler his equipment went crazy at the same time as our carbon monoxide alarm also went crazy! To cut to the chase he had to isolate the boiler as it was dangerous. 

Thankfully the rental agency were able to get an engineer from Worcester (the company that makes the boiler) out within a week. That engineer arrived and attached some sort of meter to the boiler which also went crazy as soon as he switched it on again, in fact he said afterwards that it gave off the highest reading he had ever seen! He asked what had made us call him  out so I said it just happened to be a gas safety inspection and he said in that case we were incredibly lucky it happened when it did.Which was pretty damn scary frankly. Carbon monoxide is a silent killer after all.  

I'm pleased to say everything is now fixed.

That same week Himself had announced that he was planning to go out to Avebury at the weekend because the podcast he and his friends have reviewing vintage tv shows, was planning to do an episode about the 1970’s children’s television programme The Children Of The Stones. 

I had heard of it (mostly because Charlotte is a big fan) but can’t recall if I watched it back in the day. Apparently, the show was filmed at Avebury so Himself was going to see if it would be suitable for him to record his part of the podcast live there, or at the very least record a few trailers for the show.

As it has been at least 20 years (and probably more like 30) since I last visited Avebury, I invited myself along.

 

We duly got up bright and early on Saturday and caught a train to Swindon. From there we caught a bus out to Avebury which took about 30 minutes. Thankfully it didn’t take long to go from the outskirts of Swindon, which look like the Armageddon has happened, to sweeping countryside and rolling hills.

We weren’t quite sure where to get off but another passenger told us she was heading there too and gave us the nod when it was the right stop. 

It was a gorgeous day, and still the school holidays, but I think we were both somewhat taken aback by the sheer volume of people everywhere

This was me trying to take a picture without too many people in it!

We did a leisurely circuit of the stones, waiting for quite considerable time at some points for it to be clear enough for Himself to get the shots he wanted and to be able to record a couple of bits. 

We had a look in a couple of the very expensive crystal/pagan/witchcraft shops and went into the little general store where we bought some local eggs and beer.  Finally I checked out the National Trust shop. 

We decamped to the ridiculously busy pub where I managed to snag a table outside whilst Himself queued for about 20 minutes waiting to be served. As our table was literally 2 feet away from the bus stop and facing the road, we saw the bus coming in the distance so were able to finish the last of our drinks and step across to the bus stop just as it arrived. Loads of people piled on, I’m guessing taking advantage of the £2 bus fare scheme that is currently still running. All in all a lovely day out.   

 

The following weekend was the August Bank Holiday which means only one thing, Stonor Park Craft Fair! As usual Mum and I went on the Friday and luckily for us we chose the one day with decent weather. Soo was meant to be coming with us but sadly had to cancel so Mum asked at her knitting/craft group and one of the ladies there, randomly also called Sue was able to come.

It seemed slightly bigger this year and back to it's best. We all thoroughly enjoyed our day and bought something.

I got some cards and a couple of presents for friends, I also bought Himself some artisan coffee. My best purchase was a new everyday handbag to replace my current one which is falling to bits. 

It's sustainable and made from recycled plastic bottles. It's a tad smalled than my previous bag but overall I am very pleased with it. When we had shopped and browsed our fill we headed to a pub near Mum's village that does amazing pizzas which made a delicious end to a fun day out.

On the Saturday we walked to the nearby village of Upton to try the newly reopened pub, now just called The George instead of The George and Dragon, I am intrigued why so many feel the need to drop the dragon bit, but I digress. The pub itself was still being refurbished but the bar in the garden was open so we had a coupe of pints. 

August ended as it started with a lovely walk out.

This time to Blewbury via Upton where we happened upon an ice cream van. The lady driving stayed in the drivers seat and her son came back to serve us what were the biggest ice creams I have ever seen in my life. So big in fact I could juggle both it and my camera! The moral of the tale don't let a bored child loose in an ice cream van. They were absolutely delicious.

We had a pub pitstop at the Red Lion and another on the way back at our favourite pub The Fleur, what could be better than the glorious countryside and a pint.

I do realise with these monthly round ups I have been slack on showing any purchases, you must think I have finally cured my shopping habits.....if only. 

The problem is I often can't remember what I purchased when but trust me there have most certainly been several brooch purchases and one or two dresses along the way!

The only thing I haven't really been adding too this year is the handbag collection but let me show you a couple of new editions.

Another Corde bag to add to my collection, and a gorgeous little 1920's mesh bag in almost perfect condition.

I know I definitely bought this dress

I also got a new pair of trainers, just don't look too closely at the back of right one where you can see the result of where it was rubbing my heel, bah, I need to wear them in a bit more. 

I will be back soon (I hope) with September, which includes Bournemouth, Kelmscott and so, so, so much rain.