After-comers Cannot Guess The Beauty Been.

The beautiful old oak tree has gone forever from next door's garden. I shall miss looking at it from my bedroom window in the mornings- watching the birds flying amongst its branches, hearing the wind rustling the leaves. I keep remembering Gerard Manley Hopkin's poem "Binsey Poplars" [but great though his verses are, I do agree with the sentiment that 'I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree'] 

My  aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew—
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene. 

Throwaway Lines

 I  can't keep up with this! Last week was  "Zero Waste Week". Next week is "Waste Less, Live More Week"  (details here) and this week is "Recycle Week" (see here) What comes after that? Repair Week, Refusal Week, Rotting Down Week...? 
I am suffering with information overload,  and not at all sure that it's helping me save the planet.



However I did read a very thought provoking blog post yesterday here.  Jen, at "My Make Do and Mend Life" argues that recycling comes way down the list after refusing, reusing, reducing, refilling and repairing.   It seems a great idea to recycle your old plastic bottles into a new fleece - until you realise that each time you wash that fleece, you are releasing more plastic micro particles into the oceans.
How much of the paper which went into my recycle bin yesterday was paper I didn't really want anyway, but yet it still found its way into my home?  
Jen says, and I agree, that we should stop acquiring the stuff in the first place.  It's all about changing our mindset about these things.  I have been taking note of the things we did as a family which are working towards ZW 

• On Friday, Liz and I bought veg on the market, and it went straight into our cotton shoppers, not into plastic carriers.
• On Saturday, I repaired some jeans and a top for the girls. 
• On Sunday we had some leftover green veg - Liz pureed these to make food for Rosie. [If she hadn't, I'd have frozen them to go into a soup]
• Monday morning at 6.30am, I took Steph to catch her train to work in Surrey. She had her coffee in the insulated travel mug to drink en route to the station whilst I drove, then I brought it home.
• Monday night we had left over potato - Liz made a batch of potato cakes [adding flour and egg, but NO salt] Rosie had one for Tuesday breakfast, and we ate the rest at lunchtime with some other leftover meat [adding our own condiments]
• Liz borrowed the travel mug on Tuesday afternoon.  Bob filled it with coffee for her so she could have a cuppa on the train. Cheaper than buying one from the trolley, and no need for a disposable cup. I'll collect it next week, when I stay over with them for my WWDP meeting.
• Bob spent time Tuesday evening turning some leftover wood into a top for the old BBQ stand. 

I don't think we are particularly noble, and we're nowhere near as efficient at this as many of the other bloggers I read. Hugh F-W has pointed out that most of the 'recyclable coffee cups' still end up in landfill. I suspect that many items bearing the recycling arrows logo do likewise. 

It is hard to change habits.  I want to learn to start at the place where I question the merit of obtaining that item at all. We need to stop using "it's OK, I can recycle it afterwards" as our default position. Instead I need to ask myself "is this the best solution to the problem -not just now, but in the long term?" I have a responsibility to be a good steward of the earth - that hasn't changed since Genesis Chapter 1 - not just for myself, but for subsequent generations yet to come.

Spreading It Around

The Queen took the butter
And brought it to His Majesty;
The King said, "Butter, eh?"
And bounced out of bed.
"Nobody," he said,
As he kissed her tenderly,
"Nobody," he said,
As he slid down the banisters,

"Nobody, my darling, could call me a fussy man -
BUT - I do like a little bit of butter to my bread!" 

I can't think of another butter poem at the minute, apart from A A Milne's one about the King's Breakfast. Liz brought me a jar of her home made butter at the weekend. But this is Spoon Butter. It is designed to nourish and rejuvenate your treen [don't you just love that word?] Treen is the proper term for small domestic wooden objects [ie spoons, salad servers, little bowls etc] You rub it in lavishly, and leave it overnight, then polish the items again next morning with a clean cloth. She was making some for herself, and thought that as I was in a polishing sort of mood, I would like a jar too [thanks, sweetheart, you are kind to your old Mum!]

Thus far I have just done one item - the hand carved wooden scoop which lives in my salt pig - referred to as "The Broomfield Spoon" in honour of the friend who made it. It was looking quite dull and dry. It is lovely and golden and smooth again now...

Here is the recipe -

in a jar put the following

25g beeswax

100ml sunflower oil

a few drops of peppermint oil

Melt these by standing the jar in a pan of simmering water. Stir to combine, allow to cool. Done!

The peppermint oil is not essential, but gives it a lovely perfume. 

Liz and Rosie left us after lunch on Tuesday, having spent the morning at Kingston Lacy, the lovely National Trust property nearby. We decided to just walk in the gardens, not go into the house. Half way round, the heavens opened, there was lightning and thunder, and we had to retreat to the coffee shop in the Old Stables. Rosie certainly enjoyed munching on her NT biscuit. 

What fun we've had together over the last few days.

Going To Pot!

My personal declutter rule is "No more china from charity shops unless it is Hornsea  -  preferably Cornrose pattern" So when I  saw this lovely teapot in the DEBRA CS  in Poole yesterday when I was out with Liz and Rosie,  I texted Bob a picture first! It was a real bargain  - and came with 3 cups and saucers too.

 

In other news,  we were very happy on Sunday night that both Helen Archer/Tichener  AND  Ross Poldark's are free.  But we wonder if the TV company producing  GBBO may have been just a little too greedy? 

This Is Getting Silly!

I'm always amused by the idea of a self basting chicken. Waitrose sell 'essential' ones.

And when Liz was younger,  she talked about rugs for ponies called Self-righting New Zealanders. 

But now I think that I have heard it all.  In Norfolk over the weekend, they had a self-releasing squirrel 

 

It could only happen in Norfolk.  Detailshere

Wet, Windy Wimborne - and Sparkling, Sunny Southbourne

What a difference a day makes - Saturday morning's brief trip to Wimborne was Very Damp. The poor pipers outside the Minster were all in their waterproof capes as they played 'Amazing Grace'. We went into Le Petit Prince Café  for coffee and cake. Rosie is getting very keen on feeding herself, and trying new tastes.

Then on Sunday the sun shone, and the weather was totally different. In the afternoon, Bob boarded the coach with others from UCF to go to the BBC Big Sing at the Albert Hall. And we four girls drove to Southbourne. We watched paragliders, we paddled [Rosie didn't like the cold waves!] collected pretty shells, and had ices at Café Riva. This was Rosie's first experience of ice cream. She prefers this to carrot and coriander soup [sadly I never got a picture of her disgusted expression when she tasted that!] The sun shone and the sky was so blue.
How blessed am I, to be able to enjoy such a glorious weekend with my three girls!
I hope your weekend was good too.

It's Education Sunday

For well over a hundred years there has been an annual recognition of Education Sunday in England and Wales. It is a national day of prayer and celebration for everyone in the world of education. The theme is devised by an ecumenical steering group representing different Christian denominations and organisations.
For some years it has been celebrated on the ninth Sunday before Easter. However, from 2016, after extensive consultation, it has moved to coincide with the start of the school year. From this year onwards, Education Sunday will be the second Sunday in September. In 2016 this will be today - Sunday 11 September. The theme is 'all are welcome'

You can watch the video from Praying for Schools. 





Or read this prayer written by friends at Bloomsbury Baptist Church

God of freedom and life,
We praise you for the gifts of education, and for those who labour to teach others.
For school teachers and university lecturers, for those who work in toddler groups and nurseries, for parents and grandparents, for Sunday school teachers, and for those who radiate wisdom without realizing, we thank you.
And we ask you that they might be encouraged in their work, and valued for the role they play.
Wherever children are brought up by those with a lust for terror, or by the impersonal face of the television or computer screen, we pray that you would bring true freedom.
Wherever market forces or nationalism or greed produce adults who have never grown up, we pray that you would bring true freedom.
Wherever people are programmed instead of taught, brainwashed instead of enlightened, manipulated instead of educated, we pray that you would bring freedom.
Teach us to recognize our own role in education, help us to encourage those who have committed their lives to this task, and make us all to heralds of the truth that sets people free.

E-Tweezer Was OK

I think I wasn't too good with Zero Waste Week [apart from the anagram above!] - I spent more time reading about it than putting things into practice. 
Most helpful things I read were 

"Don't go straight into it, spend some time planning how and what you are going to change" and "This is a journey towards zero waste, realistically it is not completely achievable for any of us" [this from Bea Johnson, the ZW guru]
I think that you have to start from where you are at.  And I live in a small town in the south of England.  I  cannot find any bulk buy outlet near me - and when I looked online ,  the cost was prohibitive.  Why pay 60% more for 10kg of flour,  and struggle to store it, when I can get a small bag at lower unit price, in Lidl  (and I can recycle the paper bag too) I am trying very hard to keep my pantry tidy, and decant goods into glass storage jars, or pretty tins** 

..but unlike Bea, I do not want to use heavy glass jars to store things in my freezer. For a start, the containers themselves will take up too much volume - and furthermore, I already have a neat stack of plastic boxes which are efficient and pack well into the drawers.
I thought I was doing well buying my lovely Mont St Michel tin of biscuits - but inside, they are packed in threes in sealed plastic packets!

Then there is the whole medication thing, Like it or not, I am taking daily tablets which come in blister packs.


These mixed-material wrappings are so difficult to recycle. I did buy my fruit and veg on the market, and the cheery chappie [who sings little songs about 'every bowl a pound'] was happy to pour carrots, sweet potatoes and bananas straight into my cotton shoppers. But my yellow-stickered sausages in M&S had a plasticised paper wrapping. 
Liz and I had a drink in the café at M&S - but I realised too late that they serve tea in non recyclable paper cups [I didn't have an alternative mug with me either] She said that whilst washable nappies are better for the environment  [and much tidier now than the terry squares I used for her] once Rosie goes to nursery, she cannot use them. They do not have the staff or facilities to organise each child's personal nappy bucket - every baby must be in disposables.
Liz and I agreed that many aspects of the Zero Waste thing are down to personal organisation, and thinking ahead.

• keep the reusable coffee cup in your bag
• refuse the free pens that they give you at the conference, take one with you
• be diligent about sorting recyclable rubbish into the correct bin
• avoid food waste as much as possible
• think carefully about repairing items - and about replacing them only if you must

Bea Johnson is able to afford bulk buy goods and Farmers' Market produce - many of us are on much tighter budgets. I am happy to pay a premium for free range eggs, properly reared meat, and fair trade goods - but I am not so sure about some of the other items [bamboo toothbrushes, fancy steel lunchboxes...] 

BJ has been criticised for her regular air travel. But she believes it is important that she and her children and husband visit her family in France each year. There is an incredible amount of waste when an airliner goes out of service [not to mention all the disposables used whilst it is in service] As she says, this is all about 'working towards' the goal - the efforts made in one area do offset the waste in another.

I have always been keep on repairing, reusing and recycling, for as long as I can remember [that probably comes from parents who lived through WW2, and managed on a very small income] but I shall be more careful about trying to refuse the stuff I do not need. I think that is the one point which I particularly need to work on. We will see what happens.

**don't you just love that tin of lobster bisque - Bob found it in the French Deli in Norwich when we were on holiday. I am saving it for a special treat!

I just found another British Zero Waste Site here with helpful links [much of Bea's stuff is not so accessible outside the USA]

Pickling, Passivating or Preserving?

I had heard about passivating - a treatment for stainless steel. It is what we originally thought our oven doors needed - but they didn't, they needed powder coating instead
But pickling? for stainless steel? It means removing a thin layer from surface, in order to get rid of impurities etc.
I haven't done any pickling this year.
But I have done some other preserving recently.
I made 6lbs of marmalade with a tin of MaMade this week.
I have prepared and frozen lots of apples - some plain, some pies, some crumbles- using fruit from friends' trees.
An unexpected glut of red and yellow peppers have been slow roasted and frozen too. 
And I harvested the Cornerstones lavender, and dried the buds. They are in a jar for use in lavender bags etc.
It is very satisfying to have prepared food in the warm sunshine ready for the cooler autumn months!
Have you done any pickling or preserving recently?

Large Cakes from The Fat Chicken's Mother.

...which sounds nothing like as attractive as Les Grandes Galettes de la Mère Poulard, does it? When we left Kirby Muxloe [over 19 months ago] our dear friends in the other local Churches Together group collected together and gave us a generous M&S token 'for your new home'. We promptly replaced our dreadful saggy pillows. But there was just a little bit left on the card. I have finally spent it on biscuits. But these are not just any biscuits. These are delicious French biscuits, in a lovely tin.

These delicious [and, indeed, large] biscuits remind me of a very wet, windy day back in 2005, when we were in Normandy, on the motorbike, looking at Mont-St-Michel through the mist and rain [weather too bad to risk the bike on the causeway across]
La Mère Poulard is a hotel on Mont-St-M. The owners Annette and Victor Poulard realised that tourists came , but left promptly before the tides washed over the causeway - so shrewdly offered food and hospitality to make them stay longer. Their signature dish was a large omelette mixed in a copper bowl,cooked over an open fire. 

You can still buy these - but expect to pay upwards of £75 - the eggs come accompanied by lobster and truffled potatoes! Famous diners including Hemingway and Yves St Laurent have autographed the walls of the restaurant. I shall stick to just eating the biscuits. M&S is the cheapest place to buy these at the moment [especially if you have a gift token]
And when the biscuits are all eaten, the tin will be a reminder of my Christian friends back in Leicestershire [thank you!]
I enjoyed this foodie review I found online
"Opening a sachet to remove a biscuit, now made in a factory, you nonetheless sense the care that has gone into its preparation. Provenance is immediately apparent, for there, centrally positioned in light yellow relief, is a stylised Mont Saint-Michel. The surround is a deeper gold, giving way to a thin rim of brown biscuit.

A scent of sugary, yolky, vanilla caramel rises and the galette breaks with a comforting snap as tiny crumbs fall to be collected later with a moistened finger... In the mouth it is crunchy, sandy almost, and deliciously melts away with those flavours of vanilla and caramel. It is an evocative memory of a French pâtisserie."

Souvenirs heureux d'un grand temps en France  - and equally happy memories of Churches Together in KM&LFE.

Look What The Mamas Made!

Back in 1986, I gave Liz her first cookbook. Although she hadn't started school, she was a competent reader, and enjoyed helping in the kitchen.
She still has this little book on her kitchen shelf, and occasionally cooks something from it.
I suspect Rosie will be using it in a few years' time. 
The book has simple recipes, well explained and laid out beautifully, so they are easy to follow.
Last week Liz sent me a picture of a cake she had made - Marmalade Gingerbread 

It did look delicious. Not to be outdone, I decided to bake one too! They look pleasingly similar.
I cut it in half and froze some, and put the other in a tin to be enjoyed

I suspect if it had all gone into the tin, it might have all gone in a day or two.
The ginger heat and the orange tang of the marmalade come through beautifully


This isn't the sort of gingerbread with a 'snap' as Paul H referred to on the GBBO, nor is it a sticky ginger cake as made by McVities. It is just a very pleasant, homely cake, to accompany a cup of tea!

Here's the recipe [mine didn't take the full hour to cook]

Ingredients

8oz (225g) self-raising flour
1 beaten egg
3oz (75g) butter/margarine
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
5oz (150g) golden syrup
8oz (225g) chunky marmalade
1 tbsp hot water
a pinch of salt

Other stuff
7″ (18cm) square cake tin, greased & lined
Oven setting: 325°F / 170°C / Gas Mark 3
Cooking time: one hour [or maybe less!]

Method

1. Cut up the butter, put it in a saucepan with the syrup and melt them over a low heat.
2. Sift the flour, ginger, salt and cinnamon into a bowl. Make a hollow in the centre.
3. Slowly pour the syrup mixture into the hollow, stirring in the flour from the sides as you do so.
4. Add the marmalade, egg and water and mix everything together. The mixture should be soft and drop off a spoon easily. If it is stiff, add more water.
5. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and spread it out evenly with a knife.
6. Bake the cake on the centre shelf of the oven for an hour.
7. The cake is done when it is golden brown and the centre feels springy to the touch. If you push a skewer into the centre of the cake it should come out clean.
8. Let the cake cool in the tin for 15 minutes then turn it out on to a wire cooling rack.

I forgot to ask Liz if Rosie has sampled the cake and if she enjoyed it- she is learning to appreciate all sorts of foods now!

Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot

That's the mantra of Bea Johnson, the Frenchwoman who started the Zero Waste Movement. 

 In 2008, Bea [who went to the USA as an au pair, married an American guy, and stayed there with him to raise their two sons] realised just how much was being thrown away in their home. Where is 'away'? is it the ocean? or landfill? and so many of these things do not bio-degrade, they remain and pollute the environment. [brief moment to cheer the current progress on the British government's steps towards banning microbeads]
But back to Bea - she encouraged her family to stop using disposables, avoid using plastics, and reduce the amount of unnecessary stuff coming into their home. Her 5-R rules are these [and should be followed in the order given]

Refuse - Refuse what you don’t need, such as single-use plastics, freebies (all those promotional pens and keyrings), junk mail, plastic bags, etc. This way you won’t accumulate ‘stuff’ that you didn’t really want in the first place.

Reduce - Reduce what you already use, like packaging, products, your car, technology, and reduce the quantities of things you buy.

Reuse - Shop with non-plastic bags, rent out your car or house, buy used, buy smart (durable, rechargeable), and extend the life of what you already own by repairing it or using it in new ways.

Recycle - Because recycling uses a lot of energy to recycle and it’s confusing to know what can be recycled and what can’t, Bea says you should look at labels before you buy anything to make sure it can easily be recycled or reused before purchasing.

Rot - Aka composting. Instead of throwing away food scraps, you can compost your food waste, turn it into soil, and use it to grow new things. It’s nature’s way of recycling!

Bea maintains that by following this method, the amount of stuff which is sent from her home [two adults, two teenage children] to landfill each year is this...

Just one Kilner jar [nb, she obviously keeps the jar!]

Some of her ideas are good, and worth following. Even Bea admits, in her Ted Talk that some of her early experiments had disastrous outcomes. 

I am still reading up on the whole idea of a 'Zero Waste Home' - and she says this is what she is working towards - she admits it is virtually impossible to achieve.

But even though I haven't got my head round this yet [Bob and I agree that some things are a step too far for us- like re-usable toilet wipes, instead of loo paper, or taking dishes to the Chinese Takeaway and asking them to put our egg fred rice and sweet'n'sour straight into them, and not into their plastic boxes] I am flagging up the subject today, because the 2016 British Zero Waste Week has just started. 

This is spearheaded by a lady called Rachelle Straus, whose community was washed away in the Boscastle floods some years ago. At that point she started wondering what kind of a world she was leaving for her children - and what could she do to improve things. Read more about her and her ideas here. You can sign up for encouraging daily emails through the week, and read other peoples ideas about reducing waste.
Like I say, I am still reading round the subject and thinking it through - more posts will follow I am sure.
Have you encountered Zero Waste initiatives? 
Are you involved in any yourself? 

London's Burning

5th September 1666 - exactly 350 years ago - marked the end of the Great Fire of London. Over the weekend, the Royal Mail brought out a set of six commemorative stamps

It is interesting to see this unusual comic strip style on our stamps - but they tell the story in an interesting way. I like the use of the London Streets dividing up the sections of each stamp, and the amazing detail. I had thought we might have a drawing of Samuel Pepys burying his Parmesan Cheese - but I think it is better that we are reminded of the hundreds who lost everything.

But I do wish that they would include an ordinary 2nd class stamp in the Commemorative sets - I so rarely use any of the more expensive ones.
Does anyone else remember the "Look and Learn" children's magazine? The style of these illustrations reminds me of the historical stories told in those pages.

Still Emily

Some years ago, at a Church Anniversary in Kirby Muxloe, a family visited our church for the first time. They knew the guest preacher. They sat at the front and I was aware that the mother appeared to be 'signing' for her daughter [an attractive woman in her twenties]. After the service, I met them - they were a delightful family, and Mum explained that Emily had lost her hearing following illness. My friend Carole told me she had taught Emily Owen and her sisters some years before.
In her teens, Emily developed NF2 - where tumours grow all over the body. She knew that if she had the operation to remove a tumour in her skull, then she would wake from the anaesthetic into a silent world.Recently, Emily published a memoir - and Carole generously sent me a copy. It is deeply moving, a story of faith, and bravery and love. The triumph of a young woman whose courage brought her through the most awful times of pain and distress, sustained by her trust in God, and the support of her wonderful family. Despite all that she has lost - her hearing, her gift of playing the flute, her good eyesight, her control of facial muscles, her  ability to walk properly - and her childhood hopes and dreams for the future - yet she has come out of it a beautiful, happy woman, and she is Still Emily.

She talks about 'seeing rainbows in the silence' - even though she cannot hear, she can see God's hand on her life, and feel his love and blessings. 
She says "No one wants to go through what I went through nor live with the condition that I have, but my ordeal made me look at life in many different ways and indeed experience extraordinary things."

Check out Emily's website, and read her book - it will challenge and inspire you! Thanks Carole for sending me a copy  
And please do watch this little clip - it is less than 2 minutes long

Victoria And Vinegar

I have finally caught up with the first two episodes of "Victoria" on ITV. I recorded them so was able to zizz quickly through the advert breaks. There seemed to be a lot of them, and I understand people have been complaining about their frequency ['however often Sainsburys tell me to, I shall not be putting peaches on my pizza' tweeted one woman]

All the Whovians are enjoying Jenna Coleman - and other actors from that oeuvre, and it appears that a whole new generation have just discovered Rufus Sewell. Where have they been? I ask myself, having first thought he was a brilliant actor [and not too bad to look at either] more than 20 years ago when I saw him in Cold Comfort Farm.  
btw Mags - I now have my own copy of that DVD, so can enjoy Stella Gibbons glorious prose whenever I want!
RS has also been more recently in Pillars of the Earth, Aurelio Zen and Parade's End. He plays Lord Melbourne brilliantly - so I shall overlook the fact that he is only 48 and undeniably goodlooking, whereas the real Lord M was rather overweight, and 10 years older when Victoria came to the throne. But hey, this is Sunday night chill-out TV, and Poldark is back tomorrow, all torn shirt and rippling muscles,so ITV has got to make a bit of an effort to get some viewers. As I rarely watch any of these in 'real time' I doubt I shall feel particularly conflicted.
If you can overlook the historical inaccuracies, it is, thus far, proving to be reasonable entertainment [particularly whilst tackling the Ironing Mountain] But I do keep expecting Jenna to go outside the Palace and step into the Tardis.
On the domestic front, Bob has resolved the Vinegar Issue. He found a helpful video on YouTube showing how to refill a non-refillable bottle. Once I have used up the remaining liquid, I shall try this and let you know if it works. 

This clip does come with a warning;
Follow this advice entirely at your own risk and ensure an adult is present. For those of you that believe in re-use before recycle, hate waste and like vinegar, this video shows you how to remove the non-removable lid from a Sarsons vinegar bottle.
Therefore I shall ensure Bob, or amother adult, is present when I do this! I've discovered that Sarson's Vinegar was around even before Victoria was born -James Sarson started the business in 1794, and then his son Henry took over. Referencing the biblical story of the Wise Virgins in Matthew 25, he named the product "Virgin Vinegar" for its purity and strength. The name was eventually dropped.

The Sarsons website is a mine of information. Vinegar is often regarded as one of the super eco friendly cleansers - but their helpful page of tips points out one or two places where it is not a good idea to use it for cleaning. e.g. this one

Your smartphone and laptop monitor probably have a thin layer of oleophobic coating that limits fingerprints and smudges. Acidic vinegar can strip this off, so you should never use it to clean sensitive screens.

So don't use vinegar for that or your family may regally declare "we are not amused"

Badly Handled Situation?

Blatantly Heartless Selfishness? Broken-hearted Hard-done-by Staff  I am not sure what BHS stands for anymore. The final shops closed on Monday after 88 years of being on our high streets

My Mum was fond of BHS - I think she regarded it as "the poor man's M&S". If we couldn't find something in Dereham Woolworth's, then usually it was obtainable from Norwich BHS.
When Bob and I married in 1979, her cream wedding hat came from BHS. So did the one worn by Bob's Mum. In fact, they wore identical hats. We'd checked their outfits were different colours - but omitted to consider their accessories.
I had an orange wedding hat from BHS in the 70s, for the wedding of my friends David and Susan. In fact, most people I know bought wedding hats from the shop.
In later years, I found lots of bargains in their sales - children's schoolwear, nightwear, slippers, towels, sheets...there's still BHS bedlinen in the airing cupboard. Their lighting range was also excellent [in the days before IKEA arrived, they were the home store]
Our best ever discovery was that they had a range of simple stainless steel cutlery which bore a remarkable similarity to our best WMF wedding present stuff. For 30 years we have been using it as our 'everyday' stuff - but if we have lots of dinner guests, it doubles up alongside the 'posh' - the knives are almost identical

BHS left, WMF right.

I am sorry BHS has gone - but it did seem to lose the plot in the last 15 years or so. Looking at the items in the closing down sale in Norwich last month, I couldn't really see why anyone would want to buy them. 

It does seem too that Mr Greed [aka Sir Philip Green - how on earth can this man justify his knighthood for services to retail?] knowingly sold on the company, and the pension scheme problems for just £1 to a guy who was ill-equipped to deal with them.
I do hope the redundant staff find new employment soon - it is always those at the bottom of the business who come off worst. Farewell BHS
Fings ain't wot they used to be, as Max Bygraves used to sing.

While I am having a little rant, I shall mention this item. The Sarson's Vinegar Bottle. For years I have had one of these - the one which moved here from Kirby was purchased in 2001 [don't ask how I know, but it was] Whenever it was empty, I'd unscrew the top, wash it thoroughly and refill cheaper vinegar from a large economy bottle. My bottle was sparkly, clean - and lost its Sarson's label years ago. Last month, I dropped it on the kitchen floor and it smashed. So I purchased another. Now I discover that the design has changed sometime in the last 15 years. The red cap no longer unscrews. So I cannot refill it as I used to. Bother!
I shall have to seek out another small refillable bottle. 
Any suggestions?

Many Hands Make Light Work

How was your Bank Holiday? [assuming you were somewhere that had one this week] 
We had planned to do lots of gardening - then Bob remembered he had some lighting projects to sort out, so I said I would work outside if he did inside jobs. First he fixed up the Gospel chandelier over the dining table.

And he replaced the outside security light - with one which is better placed lower down the wall, and actually works when it is supposed to! Finally, he put up a couple of lamps hanging over the 'breakfast bar' in the kitchen. They're  Melodi pendants from IKEA, and cost £5 each. I love the extra light over the worktop, they glow beautifully in the evening.

So Bob had a very productive day. 

Mine was fairly good - I worked very hard at weeding [in my Gardening Gloves] and absolutely filled the garden bin. This is where things started to go pear-shaped. Knowing that the bin was due for collection on Wednesday, I decided to pull the bin out to the front of the house before I forgot.

Somehow, I managed to catch the very heavy bin on the garage door key, and bent it at right angles. We have no spare garage key!

Bob removed the key, declared it was split, and we'd need to get a new one cut after the Bank Holiday. He didn't risk turning it to lock the door, in case it broke, so we had to leave the garage unlocked overnight. On Tuesday, we went out to do a little shopping and I put the 'kitchen key ring' [garage and shed keys] onto the carabiner that holds my car and house keys.

But when we got to Timpsons at Sainsburys, I discovered that the key had broken - and I only had the round bit on the ring - not the part that opens the lock!

Bob left me to buy groceries and went home to look for it. He returned without it.

We went home - and finally Bob discovered it in the middle of the lawn [I'd been to check the shed was locked, and it must have broken en route] In the end, he managed to remove the old lock barrel and has replaced it with a new one [so we now have spare garage keys] Very glad that he is such a practical chap.

Yesterday I went to see a friend, and cycled. I saw the most cute little Austin Seven on the A31. I stopped and took a photo when it was stationary at the traffic lights.

AME534 is apparently a well known vintage vehicle - it seems to be all over the Internet. I suspect it currently has Twyford Waterworks on the front because they have their Open Day/Vintage Event on Sunday. I doubt I shall be able to visit, but it looks like a fun place. Seeing the little Home Guard Car brought back happy memories of Clive Rushby's Vintage WW2 Vehicle displays at the Village Fun Day back in Kirby Muxloe

I continued pedalling along, feeling rather hot and tired [my face red as a tomato]

There wasn't another pedestrian on the pavement or cyclist on the cycle path. 

I heard a wolf whistle. I looked over my shoulder, and there was a second whistle from a vehicle behind me.

Some lads in a camper van going past, and they were clearly whistling ME. 

My inner, moderately feminist self was quite properly annoyed at their insolence. My outer, moderately overweight 61-year old grandmother self was rather pleased to have been noticed. [I suspect these lads need to go to SpecSavers!]