On reflection

There has not been much to report on the renovation front recently. This is because we try to concentrate on the cottage in the winter and the garden in the summer. Also the small jobs, which we do ourselves, tend to be straight forward and incident free, but in the last few weeks not everything has gone to plan. We have been without a full length mirror in the bedroom since the old bedroom was taken out, about 18 months ago, if not longer. Well, one wet Saturday my husband decided that we would rectify this issue. So off we went to purchase a new mirror, which would need to be fixed inside one of the wardrobe doors. By the time we returned home with our new mirror and tube of mirror glue it was no longer wet and an afternoon in the garden beckoned. The mirror then hung around in a corner of the bedroom for a few weeks whilst we gardened.

Fast forward to last weekend, when it was wet and I charmed (threatened really) my husband into gluing the mirror onto the wardrobe door. This involved removing the wardrobe door and lying it flat on the carpet until the mirror glue had dried and it was safe to re fix the wardrobe door. My husband had applied the glue when he realised that the instructions did not state how long it took for the glue to dry and I noticed that the glue was ten days out of date. Yes, even glue has an expiry date these days! Too late, now, to take it back and complain. We left the mirror for an hour or so, to dry, which was probably not long enough, but my husband can be impatient. I helped him screw the wardrobe door back into place and we carefully shut it. He collected up his tools and I headed into another room. As my husband descended the stairs the was a thump. 'What could that be?' we both thought. Really it could only be one thing. I gently opened the wardrobe door to find that the mirror had slid off the door. There are advantages to having a wardrobe stuffed full of clothes. Luckily the mirror was unharmed. I then had to spend, I don't know how long, removing the glue from the inside of the wardrobe door and the back of he mirror. We now have another tube of mirror glue and will be repeating this exercise, with I hope more success, the next time we have a wet weekend. What is really annoying is that my husband has done this before, in our previous house, without any problems.

Being creative

I have been given me this pretty and unusual award by Mima. So it is a big thank you to her for being so kind. I have to list six things which make me happy then pass the award onto six blogs.
The six things that make me happy are:

• having my husband home
  
• our garden
  
• seeing all our work on the cottage come to fruition
  
• in the summer, a warm sunny day
  
• sitting by a log fire in the winter
  
• a relaxing bath after a hard day at work
  

I am passing the award onto three blogs that I have been reading for some time:

imbeingheldhostage - if I could only use one word to describe her blog it would be creative, so I can not, not give this award to her.
strawberry jam anne - for such a creative blog title
moments from suburbia - who always writes about something different

and three enjoyable blogs that I have recently started to read:

crystaljigsaw
millennium housewife
sandi mcbride

A resting place in the sun

A few years ago whilst on holiday in Western Crete we visited the Souda Bay cemetery, which was gifted to the War Graves Commission by the Greek people after WWII. There are 1527 graves of service men who lost their lives in the Battle of Crete, which took place between May 20 to 31, 1941. Most of those buried there are British but there are 447 New Zealanders and 197 Australians. Some are unknown. Most of them were late teens or early twenties. So young.

Souda Bay is a horse shoe shaped bay to the east of Chania. The cemetery, which is surrounded by eucalyptus trees, lies at the bottom of the horse shoe facing out into the bay. The setting is quiet and almost beautiful. The sea, which was like a mill pond that day, gently lapped the nearby shore. The cemetery is immaculate with rows of white head stones, neatly mown grass and tidy flower beds. There was not a weed, dead flower head or piece of litter to be seen. The cemetery is protected by the hills on its' northern side and the White Mountains to the south. These cast a shadow over the sea and give a slightly eerie feel. But the overwhelming impression is of a very peaceful, tranquil and serene location, making it very difficult to contemplate the bloody battle which took place not far away. I did not want to leave and there are not words adequate to describe what I saw.

A game of tag

I have been tagged by Gill to reveal six interesting things about myself. I only visited her blog to look at a recipe and and I got tagged! Her blog is worth visiting for the recipes alone, but seriously she does write some interesting posts. I have had to have a long hard think about this as I do not think that I am very interesting. Anyway, here goes.

1. I was born and brought up in East Yorkshire. I have arrive in Cheshire via Bath, Oxford, London and Surrey.
   
2. I met my husband on holiday, on a Greek island.
   
3. I am a keen gardener and would spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week out in the garden if I could.
   
4. At school I was a sprinter and played left wing for the school hockey team.
   
5. Peppers and chillies do not like me and the smell of a dog can give me a migraine.
   
6. I used to be a civil servant.
   

I am passing the tag on to the following six bloggers:

blog that mama
Denise - an English girl rambles
dottie
gone back south
imbeingheldhostage
millennium housewife

Everything he does

Last Thursday night we went to see the Canadian rocker, Bryan Adams, at the MEN Arena in Manchester. We arrived in good time so as not to miss any of the concert. At 7.30 pm we found ourselves sitting in a half empty arena as the support band took to the stage unannounced. We haven't a clue who they were. They were instantly forgettable and too loud to hear properly - I know that sounds like a contradiction but really they just seemed to be making a noise. After their half hour warm up slot they left the stage and it was another half an hour before Bryan Adams made his appearance, by which time any warmth that the warm up act had generated had risen up to the rafters, whilst the audience sat in a slightly chilly arena. Had we realised that the concert would not really start until 8.30 pm, my husband could have had another hour at work or we need not have bolted our meal then driven hell for leather down the motorway. What was also slightly disconcerting was that in the area where the stalls would normally be, the seats had been removed and the audience there were standing. The audience continued to make their way to this area and to fill up the other half of the seats during the warm up act and the following half an hour. For the duration of the concert people were milling around at he back of the standing area, and I felt as if I were watching from Picadilly Circus or Waterloo Station, as we were sitting at the back of the standing area. By the time Bryan Adams appeared the arena looked to be just about full, but I would not say that it was a sell out.

In the darkness it was difficult to see exactly what was going on, but we could see Bryan Adams on the screens either side of the stage. Then we realised that he was making his way, through the audience to a small stage in the middle of the standing area. From where we were sitting we had a pretty good view of his first two numbers, which he performed acoustically from this small stage. At the start of his third number his band came to life on the main stage and he made his way through the audience, back to the main stage. I am sure that most pop stars would not even try such a thing for fear of being mobbed. Now we were into a rock concert, albeit soft rock. It was raw, noisy and loud with a multitude of brightly coloured lights. At times the sound was so loud it was distorted. Bryan Adams performance could not be faulted, as he belted out his repertoire of hits for over two hours, bouncing around the stage as he sang. Strangely there was very little atmosphere in the area. Even the enormously popular Everything I Do, I Do It For You failed to rouse the audience. At last, and I mean at last as it was his final number, the guitar twanging Run to You had the audience on their feet. Then he was gone, returning a few minutes later to do a five number encore. By the time he eventually left the stage it was nearly 11.00 pm and time to head back down the motorway.

Turning back the clock

This weekend in the UK we have turned our clocks back an hour and are now on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). For me this weekend has coincided with reminiscences of the area that I grew up in, which has been prompted by the recent success of Hull City football club, who are at present the talk of English football. On Saturday evening, after a fairytale beginning to their first season in the Premier League, they were equal on points with Chelsea and Liverpool.

I was born and brought up in East Yorkshire. Hull, or to give it its' full name Kingston upon Hull, was the nearest town. It is not a city - it does not have a cathedral. The centre of Hull was badly bombed in World War II and rebuilt in utility mode so was never very exciting. Now, after the demise of its' trawler fleet and the decline of the docks, Hull is being regenerated.


Each year in the second or third week in October, Hull Fair takes place. It always used to be the week of my birthday and I used to think how lucky I was to go to Hull Fair as a birthday treat, not realising that every other child also went, regardless of when their birthday was.




The gateway to Hull is the Humber Bridge which when it was built was the longest single span bridge in the world.





The landscape to the east of Hull is flat but to the west and north there is some stunning countryside. In recent years the Yorkshire born painter David Hockney has exhibited a series of water colour paintings of the Yorkshire countryside, which are instantly recognisable to anyone who knows the area. Going north from Hull you come to the attractive Georgian market town of Beverley then it is off to the coast to Bridlington - a fishing port which is as attractive as any in Devon or Cornwall but unfortuneately does not have the weather. Further up the coast is Scarborough which has a beach to rival any in the world but again is let down by the weather. Further up the coast again, is the pretty fising village or Whitby and the picturesque Robin Hood's Bay. Then going inland there are the Yorkshire Moors.

This is just a taste of what the area has to offer.

Living in someone else's house

When we moved to Chester we were only able to spend two weekends house hunting, before we were due to move, so decided to rent, initially, rather than buy. Renting, we felt, would give us a better feel for the area. After viewing a handful of properties we settled on a small four bed roomed detached house, on an estate built just outside Chester, about 20 years ago. A detached house makes it sound rather grand but it was a shoe box really, as were all the houses on that estate. The fourth bedroom was only big enough for a bed, a small cupboard and a chair. What we were renting was a black and white, half timbered, mock Tudor house, in the aptly named Tudor Way. When giving the address to some one over the phone they said how grand it sounded. They were probably in a call centre in India and were just making conversation.

The business of renting itself was a bit of a culture shock to us. We had both owned property, albeit with a mortgage, for about 20 years. For me it was a bit like being a student again but my husband had never rented before, having lived at home until he moved into his flat. Any problems, and there were several, had to be channelled through the letting agent who would then contact the landlord, who was living abroad. We had been used to fixing things and sorting out problems ourselves. In a way it was nice to have someone else sorting out the workmen and paying for the repairs but it meant that we were not in control of things and some problems took longer than we would have liked to get fixed. Then there was always the possibility that we may have been responsible for the damage rather than it being wear and tear.

The first morning there my husband went off to work, leaving me to have a bit of a lie in before setting about organising the kitchen. About the first thing that happened was when I pulled back the shower room curtains and the pole fell down. The agents got it fixed but after that I do not think that I pulled those curtains over again. A week later I had gone outside to put some washing on the clothes line when the back door shut behind me and locked itself. I was locked out. Luckily one of the neighbours was at home and let me phone my husband who had to come home from work to unlock the house for me. The neighbours were very nice about it. They had had the same problem themselves when they first moved in. The locks were a bit flaky. Not long after that the front door lock became so stiff that we could not unlock the door. Again the agents got it fixed but they took their time about it.

For a few weeks everything went smoothly until one evening when I was grilling pork chops for our supper. Suddenly there was a bang and a flash and the house was in darkness. The grill element had fused all the electrics in the house and the oven no longer worked. I think that we had to go out to eat for a few days until the agents got a new oven sorted out for us. Thinking that we had had a hand in the demise of the grill element the suspicious landlord insisted that he old oven was left in the garage for him to inspect!

Not long before we moved out the curtain rail fell down in the living room when I pulled the curtains over. Really the whole house needed an overhaul. Nothing much had been done to it in the 20 years since it had been built, apart from the occasional coat of paint.

One problem that we did not manage to get sorted was the central heating boiler which heated the water up almost to boiling point and guzzled gas like there was no tomorrow. Even when it was switched off the boiler used gas. We had the biggest gas bills that we have ever had while we were living in this small rented house. I was just grateful that no elderly relatives or young children visited us whilst we were living there as I was afraid that they might scald themselves on the hot water.

We lived in the rented house for eight months until we moved into the cottage that we are now living in. And guess what - the cottage had been rented out before we bought it.