Saturday Update and Here's Something.................

...............I hadn't heard of before..........................................Stove-top Pot Pourri

This is an idea from the States that I found on a blog, on a blog! ( Blog hopping again!)I think this could be an idea for the hampers.

One blog was using dried lemon and orange slices, on another website I found this mix with a whole lemon




Then this mix could be used or any combination really.



I'm liking this idea and there are free print-out labels with instructions (bung in saucepan with water and simmer)  - see top picture............... think I'll import this from across the Atlantic............Thank you too 'A Working Pantry.Blogspot' and  'Delia Creates .com'.
(A strange thing happened when I printed out the labels - they came out fine first time on a piece of white paper - to test it was printing OK, but then on coloured paper the size of the circle shrunk so the letters were overlapping - very strange - can't explain that at all)

Another week of November has been and gone and I have hot water coming out of the taps fast enough to make bubbles at last. The hot water  man had to come back  (he was here on Thursday and Friday of the previous week) which meant I had to cancel my second spell of volunteering - not a good start.

The Slow, Very  Slow kitchen man has done another third of the kitchen.
He is such a worrier and perfectionist, drives me nuts. The cupboards look lovely but I discovered the wall cupboards are not as deep as what I had before which is a bit annoying as the dinner plates won't fit in. He  volunteered to put one of the old wall cupboards into the porch/utility, which was very handy and saved getting Col's brother over to do it.
I have a week without him here then he'll be back to do the last third. Then all the work here will be finished ................3 Very Loud  Cheers..

The second jigsaw of the autumn has been finished and all pieces present - which is good. I'll be able to label it "Complete November 2018" when I take it to a car boot sale next year and make a profit on the 20p I paid for it.

The Low Spend November has more or less been abandoned. Why? Because

1. the window cleaner came on his  8 weekly visit. 
2. then I thought I ought to renew my passport as it was about to run out - I might not go anywhere but you never know and it's very useful for ID. (Ever so easy to do online - not like 10 years ago for my first passport when I had to go for an interview and list  the addresses of all houses I'd ever lived in!)
3.  the blue car needed servicing. I'm still using both cars until the MOT runs out on the old one, then it will be sold.
4. and last but not least the bird feed peanuts were running low so I found a special offer from Garden Wildlife company who were doing some free stuff with orders over £20. So if we have very bad weather I have Suet Pellets for extra birdy protein

I'll doing Low Spend January instead...............maybe.


Have a lovely weekend everyone ............................hope you have good things planned

Back Monday
Sue

A Children's Book Plus Other Books Read.

I know someone must have mentioned this on a blog otherwise I wouldn't have ordered a children's book from the library but it was the perfect  book to read over Remembrance weekend. Hilary Mckay is an award winning children's author and wrote this new book to commemorate the centenary of the ending of the Great War



I would have to say this is for older children as it takes the families in the story through schooldays, the horrors of the Great War and onto marriage.

The story starts in 1902 when  baby Clary is born, sadly her mother dies just a while later, she has an older brother Peter  and they grow up in a house with their very remote father. He doesn't like children at all, and has nothing to do with them. Clary always believes it is her fault that her mother died and her Father doesn't care for them.
Each Summer they are sent to Cornwall to stay with their paternal grandparents and their older cousin Rupert who lives with the grandparents when he isn't at boarding school ( his parents having gone off to India without him years before).
Luckily both Clary and Peter are intelligent and manage to work their way through schools until it's time for Peter to be sent off to boarding school with Rupert.
While Clary works hard to try and get to University, some of their friends are out in France fighting and when one vanishes many things change at home.

The other books I've read this month are all crime fiction

Anne Perry- Triple Jeopardy. Historical Crime Fiction. This second book in a series featuring Daniel Pitt, a young lawyer. (the son of Thomas Pitt about whom Anne Perry previously wrote a long series of crime novels) These books are set in the Edwardian era, as the country looms towards the Great War. A Brilliant story well written as always.

Marsali Taylor  - Death in Shetland Waters. Crime Fiction A new to me author which I went for because of the title - being set in Shetland like Ann Cleeves books. I didn't realise this was the 6th in a series but it was a really good story. The action all revolves round the crew of a Tall Ship sailing from Norway to Dublin with trainees on board and a stowaway. Really enjoyed this, it had me reading even more quickly than normal.

Chris Nickson -  The Hanging Psalm. Historical Crime Fiction. This author has written several different crime series set in different periods of history. This is first of a new series. In Leeds of 1820 thief-taker Simon Westow is hired to find a kidnapped daughter but the real answers to this crime come from his own past. Fast paced story showing the darker side of Leeds.

I was really looking forward to reading The Salt Path but as it starts with a diagnoses of terminal illness I was a bit put off. I will get back to it.

Library van due next week and  I've still got several un-read, but there might not be many to collect so that's OK

Back Tomorrow
Sue.

In Suffolk We Have No Motorways and No Cities but................

...........................we do have a Cathedral.The Cathedral Church of St James and St Edmund (The dedication to St Edmund was added only in 2009)

The Cathedral is in Bury St Edmunds and of course gets a mention in the 100 Treasures in 100 Churches book.
A couple of weeks ago I drove west to look round the town where I worked  way back in the 1970's .
Many years since I'd been in the Cathedral but I happened to pick a day when it was full of primary school choirs practicing to sing at a concert, which meant it wasn't possible to get right around the inside.
But here's what I saw.
The Treasure mentioned in the book is this sculpture of King Edmund by Elizabeth Frink and commissioned in 1974.

The Cathedral complete with proper tower taken from the Abbey gardens, the top section of the tower was only added to mark the millenium in 2000. It took several years work to finish something started many years earlier.

The font with tall font cover

Couldn't get down the front of the cathedral due to the school children.
Note the perspex figures - put in place for Remembrance Day -  The figures were put in several churches to remember those people lost from the villages and towns

The figure in close up.

The kneelers in the Cathedral were created in the 1960's. each have the name of one of the villages in the Diocese.  I would have looked round to find my local villages if the place hadn't been full of schoolchildren!

A Model of the cathedral and at the back is the beginnings of a larger lego model being built brick by brick as the bricks are sponsored to pay for more refurbishment.

Poppies in the cloister to mark the centenary of the ending of the Great War

Another view of the Cathedral from the side

On the left of the photo the buildings are newer, but matching the old and housing offices, a cafe etc

The Norman Tower stands beside the Cathedral - the original way into the abbey ( more about this another day)

This is a drawing of how the abbey would have looked back in the C14, all gone apart from the few ruins and the Norman Tower which is easy to spot with what was then just the  parish church of St James to the left of it and the Abbey Gate on the left edge of the picture and St Marys church - bottom right corner. So many houses in the town must have been built using materials from the abbey after Henry VIII and the dissolution




The Suffolk Churches website explains how we come to have a Cathedral without a city

         In the early years of the 20th Century, the Church of England was at the apogee of its influence and self-confidence. The time was right to carve up the dioceses of England into smaller patches which could be more easily in touch with their parishes. Parts of the Diocese of Norwich and the Diocese of Ely were brought together to form a new diocese which would eventually take the name of the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.

And yet it might not have been called that at all. The first task for any of the new Dioceses was to choose a church to become its cathedral. For some this was easy and obvious - Essex's new Diocese would inevitably be seated at St Mary, Chelmsford, and that of south Hampshire at St Thomas, Portsmouth. But the new Suffolk diocese, which would cover all of the county except for the Lowestoft area, had a problem. There was no obvious church that stood out as a potential for a new Cathedral. The chosen building had to be big, but it also had to be suitable for expansion; historically important buildings would not lend themselves to being knocked about. Ipswich had nothing to offer except St Margaret, which was not big enough and too architecturally important for ruthless expansion, and St Mary le Tower which was big enough for a starter, and not historically important; but on too confined a site for expansion, and in any case without the gravitas a cathedral requires. Southwold, which is near to what was at the time believed to be the original Suffolk see at Dunwich, was big enough; but it was too valuable to be extended, and in any case too remote. The other great Suffolk churches, Lavenham, Blythburgh, Long Melford, Stoke by Nayland, and so on, were obviously too remote, as well as being too important to touch. The choice came down to the two Bury St Edmunds churches, and the final choice seems to have been made because St Mary had too many medieval survivals to make extension acceptable. No, only St James would do.

Many thanks for comments on the favourite music posts

Back Tomorrow
Sue