End of April Round-Up of Ins, Outs and Frugal Bits

After the huge expenses of  March, April was slightly better.....thank goodness.

One year after moving in I've finished garden expenses by buying an automatic window opener for the greenhouse and some special fixings that attach inside the greenhouse to keep the tomato etc canes upright. Finding another water-butt for £12 from the boot sale last Sunday was the very last thing needed. 

On Monday Brother-in-Law came to fit two water butts, the filter kit on the house down pipe and the greenhouse automatic window opener BUT the window opener just wouldn't fit properly - despite being from the greenhouse company. The instructions were impossible and although it's on - it isn't working so will have to come off again. Then he found he'd got a fixing thing missing from his drill so couldn't make the hole in the water butt off the down-pipe. I've got to make a level place out the front for the remaining water butt then he'll come back and do both. 

 

Other expenses................As usual there were the normal direct debits of Council Tax, phones/broadband and charity and the 4 weekly electric bill (paid right at the start of the month before prices went up, so I'll get a shock in a few days time when I send the next meter reading). I paid the house insurance, taking off the emergency call out bit that I'd paid last year when I moved in. The cost hadn't gone up - which must be a rare thing nowadays.

 

The TV licence was due and food spending was more than usual because I took my family out for a pub carvery lunch on Easter Sunday. I can't do all the things to help them that we would have done if Colin had still been alive but I can treat us all to a meal out all together.

 

I filled up the car twice - the second time was after there had been no diesel/petrol anywhere for a week. I rang the garage up the road each day until they had a delivery and I was able to nip up there to fill up. It was the same problem for Youngest Daughter over by the Suffolk coast where their one garage put a limit on how much people could get. Yet Eldest Daughter in Surrey had no problem getting fuel before driving up here at Easter. I also bought a tyre pressure gauge after having the tyre pressure warning light come on again - which I thought rather odd considering they were 4 new tyres and they all looked OK anyway. Turned out to be a loose valve - yes I had to run the car round to my mates at the repair place Again. Tom, the bosses' comment when I turn up is usually " she's broken it again!"

 

My personal spending was more than usual because of  the subs for my village WI. For some reason and I didn't inquire why, this year the committee decided to subsidized the amount so we've paid £34 instead of £44. Some of this goes to the National WI Office and some to regional Federation - we are Suffolk East - and the remainder stays with our own WI. Being a dual member at Bacton WI, the amount I pay there (half) all stays with Bacton. Then the big spend of the decorative plates and a couple of second-hand books and a haircut (They've put their prices up again too)

There was some nice bits of extra income thanks to my Daughter in law, she took photos and advertised on the local Facebook page, 4 things from the garage that had come with me here but I'd found I didn't need. People picked up from me and all paid up properly. A box of books went off to Ziffit too. Otherwise it was just the two pensions.

Frugal things?

• A bag of 'wonky' peppers, all red and orange, were £1.49 for 7. I sliced them up and froze them. Should last several weeks.
• Two bags of 'wonky apples' were just 59p for 5 which is half the price of the other apples I wish they had this discounted fruit and veg all the time.....but they don't.
  
• Craft things from car-boot sales for grandchildren.
• Brand new cushion pad £1.50 from charity shop
• Roll of children's birthday wrapping paper for 50p ditto
• Christmas crackers for £1 from boot sale
• Birthday cards for 20p each ditto
• Didn't use the tumble dryer all month
• No lights needed mornings and hardly any in the evenings now.
• Heating on less often because of the mild days mid month
• Pulled 3 stalks of rhubarb from the garden as they were growing over the young gooseberry bush and used for rhubarb fool (haven't pulled more as I want the plant to get well established this year)
• Always mixing whole milk half and half with water
  
• Reading library books for free
• Remembered to cancel Ancestry subscription after the two weeks free so I didn't pay anything.
• Home made bread

Looking forward to May one thing is a definite .....2022 May spending will be a LOT less than 2021, the month I moved in here - that was a very expensive month.

There will be all the usual things but other than those I think the only other expense due is car breakdown cover.

There are a few events that I'd like to go to in May but I already have my ticket to the Suffolk Show at the end of the month and that's the most expensive outing.

 

Have a good weekend - another Bank Holiday Monday - too soon after Easter it seems this year.

Back Monday

Sue

Still Lost for Ideas

 The idea I had for a blog post didn't happen so nothing to write about again.

The first burial in the churchyard since I've lived here will happen today, an elderly lady well known by the villagers as we had a one minutes silence for her at both WI and Over 60's group. Man and digger were there digging the grave yesterday.

 

Different to the days of Miss Read's Thrush Green books when gloomy Albert Piggott dug them by hand with much complaining.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

From April 2015

 I might have more to write about in a day or so but couldn't think of anything for today so I'm doing that "looking back to years gone by" lazy blog post.

Here are a couple of posts from April 2015 about people who blog and then stop and disappear  and Persephone Books and their Biannually newsletter

Monday, 27 April 2015

Where are they now?

I was so disappointed a few weeks ago to find Simple Living Blog had been taken down again. It's sad when blogs you have been reading vanish overnight or just stop without a word.

I read new posts from my favourite blogs by looking at my blogroll over on the right which updates as folk do new posts and when people stop writing I delete them from the bottom of the list . Down at the bottom now is Shrimpton and Perfect who has been blogging since 2011, but left with a That's All Folks, very sad. And where's Julee from Paid In Chickens - she was brilliant. I read Practically Penniless because she was homeschooling her son, something I've always been interested in, but her posts stopped in February.

Looking back to the first year of my blog in 2013,to  the people who had blogs and  commented then. Are they still around? I thought I would go back and look. Some have stopped blogging.

Dreamer- Dreaming of a Quiet Life was in Scotland, I know she cared for someone who was very ill. Sara - A Frugal wife was also in Scotland and always had lovely pictures.
A Saver of Surburbia was a fairly recent blog but now gone. The Quince Tree is Pausing. Vintage Vicki who lives a couple of miles from me was blogging long before I started, but she stopped a while back. Wendy at Blue Borage had a smallholding blog that stopped a year ago. Two members of The Suffolk Smallholders Society once started blogs,  Mid Suffolk Meadow might write again but another lady 's blog  - "Smallholding Pleasure or Profit" only lasted a few months.

I'm sure there are others I have forgotten.
I wonder why they stopped

I guess in a way it is good that a few people give up blogging or there would never be time to read all the new posts!


While some stop, there are always new people coming along, writing interesting posts which I enjoy reading.
Just recently I've found LOVING OUR VINTAGE LIFE which started in March .HOMEMAKING TALES  new this month. GOING GREEN IN FRANCE even more recent. HER INDOORS,HIM OUTDOORS again new this month. REMEMBERING THE OLD WAYS new in August last year.

 

 

Wednesday, 29 April 2015

Re-Discovered, Re-Published and Re-jigged.

I love it when Persephone Biannually drops through the letterbox. If you love books and haven't discovered this small publishing company then have a look here. Persephone Books are not just about books, they always feature print of a fabric from the period and a book mark too.They have a shop, run literary lunches and other events and produce this small magazine with a couple of short stories in twice a year. The books they are re-publishing for Spring/Summer are London War Notes by Mollie Panter-Downes ( originally written for The New Yorker  and last published in book form in 1971 ) and Vain Shadow by Jane Hervey ( originally published in 1963).
I would love the Persephone edition of the first of these but - and here is perhaps the only time I've regretted buying a book - I already have a copy of the 1971 edition. I bought it from Amazon for under £5 several  years ago when Persephone published her other books. I don't think I can justify giving my old second-hand ex-library copy away just so I can buy a smart new grey covered, patterned end-papered Persephone to match my others !

The British Library are re-printing lots of old crime books from the 1940s and earlier. I've enjoyed 2 by John Bude, which, despite being written in the 1930's, hardly seem dated. Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay, on the other hand is more obviously written way back then. I've got others on order from the library.

I've been fiddling with this blog for several weeks, first I changed the header picture, then I went from Frugal in Suffolk to Our Quiet Life in Suffolk. I've now altered the name by which I comment from Simple Suffolk smallholder to Sue in Suffolk, re-written the profile info and my two loaves of bread and a quiche which were my profile picture have been changed to a jug of Alstromeria.  Col has asked me what the heck I'm doing and if it's not broken why change it? I have no proper answer - maybe a change is as good as a rest or I changed it because I could. It's a bit like moving the furniture! I shall stop fiddling now - probably :-) or like the furniture I might just put everything back how it was!

Many thanks for all the comments after my Monday post about blogs that vanish or stop.

 I hereby promise that if ever I decide to stop blogging I will say why and goodbye! ( and Gill at Frugal in Derbyshire made me smile - look back and read her comment!)

It's good to be able to recommend new blogs for others to read, sharing the enjoyment is what it's all about.  Thank you also to everyone who said they enjoyed reading and now even more blogs have been added to my blogroll - I shall never get any work done at this rate!

Welcome to Barbara and Nanny Anny who are new followers in the Google pictures and Gwen  following by Bloglovin'. Hope you enjoy reading about our quiet life in Suffolk.
Back Soon

 

And on to April 2022

Not much has changed in blogland really in 7 years has it?. People still blog and then stop unannounced or take their blogs down without a word. I guess as long as some of us keep going there will always be something to read!

And I'm still enjoying reading the books that are being republished by the British Library and my Persephone Biannually Spring/Summer newsletter arrived last week with news of their most recent publications. I not sure about wanting to read either of their two new books but in October they've got Dorothy Whipple's memoir "The Other Day" and "The Water's Under the Earth" by John Moore - and that makes me feel really ancient because I read this and John Moore's trilogy about Brensham village way back when they were reprinted for the first time in the 1970s.

Back Tomorrow............ if I can come up with an idea for a post

Sue

A Round-Towered Church

This is a picture heavy post - so many things of interest.

 The best place to go to see a church with a round tower is Norfolk - there are 124 in the County, here in Suffolk we have 38 and spread around the rest of the Country are just 18 more. How do I know? Because at the church I was visiting I picked up a leaflet from The Round Tower Churches Society.

  

 Wortham St Mary, didn't feature in the 100 treasures in 100 churches book but the strange tower makes it unique. It's through a few villages and back lanes from home and the church itself is quite a way out of the village of Wortham.

 

 Walking up through trees covered with spring blossom, the church is well hidden.

 

 

And then the church with it's huge solid round tower appears, with the later wooden bell tower beside it.

It once had a roof, but that fell down in 1780. There's no way into the tower now

But from the west it's possible to see in to where it once had floors and fireplaces

 The walls of the tower are incredibly thick and it's thought to date from the early 12th Century.

No one knows why it was built so solidly - a look out? defensive? did someone live in it?

 Inside the church I noticed this elaborately carved door into the vestry

A very chunky font

View down the nave to the altar

These modern stained glass roundels for the four seasons date from 1980

 

And even more recently the glass below was done to celebrate the 100 years of the diocese in 2013 - the same reason the book I've been using was published. The window gets a mention in the book even though the church doesn't.

The East window has a few very older pieces of stained glass in among all the plain.

Then there are the bench ends.

All those on each side of the centre aisle have had an addition, animals and people with words from the Psalms on some. Each one is different and quite fascinating.

 They are thought to have been done by Albert Bartrum a churchwarden and builder who did a lot of work on the building at the end of the 19th Century.

Finding interesting things in the churches closer to home is better than traveling miles to visit the remaining churches from the 100 churches book!

Back Tomorrow

Sue

A Bigger Spend Than Usual

 The Saturday car-boot  sale was a total fail on useful finds and all I came home with was a bunch of beetroot. The Sunday boot sale seemed to be much the same after walking round almost the whole area and only finding a Ladybird book of Dinosaurs and a good sized Hosta (there was only one here, tucked right at the back of the border and a target for slugs - I always keep them in pots)

But then I spotted a water-butt on a stand and snapped that up for £12 (that's about a third of the price of one new) which means all that's needed now for my rain-water catching set-up is a filter kit for the other house down-pipe.

 After struggling back to the car with it I continued my look round and came across all 12 of the Diary of an Edwardian Lady Month Plates. I'd got April and October from a charity shop and a boot sale last year but of course the lady needed to sell the whole set at once and I dithered as she said she wanted £25 for them.

This is me dithering...............😵 !

Did I need them?........No.

Did I want more things to dust?...........No

Was it a waste of money?............possibly.

Would they look good for my seasonal display shelf? ...............Definitely Yes

What would  my chances be of finding any of the others at a charity shop? .......Quite Low

Had I got somewhere to store them? .......Yes

Could I get rid of 12 items to charity shops to make up for buying them?....... Yes

 

After several minutes dithering the lady said the least she would sell them for was £20 and after at first  walking away I decided to go back for them because if ever I did find any of the other 10 individually they would probably cost £2 each at least. Having them on the bookshelves one at a time won't add anything to the dusting and I'll have forgotten what they look like by the next time they are out on display!

So here they are

 

and now stored away  in the cupboard in the living room where they will be easy to get at each month and a big bag of random plates, crockery etc is now in the car waiting to go to a charity shop.

 

Then I came home quickly before I could spend any more money!

Back Tomorrow

Sue

 

Katie Thear and Self Sufficiency

One of the first places Colin and I went to after getting together was to visit the smallholding of this lady in Essex.

Katie Thear, with her husband David, was the editor and publisher of a magazine called Practical Self-Sufficiency (PSS) which started in 1975. I was working in Stowmarket Library at the time and Suffolk County Council had decided that libraries should have magazines as well as the local paper for people to read in the library (quite funny for Stowmarket library because at that time the library was in a very small old building with only room for one person to sit and read anything) and I asked if we could stock PSS and someone agreed so I was able to read it in the library.

 

 

Image from Amazon

I think it would have been in the summer of 1979 that the Thears had an open day at their smallholding in Widdington in Essex. They had many,many more visitors than expected and there was chaos on the small roads around Broad Leys.

I later subscribed to the magazine and kept all the early copies right up until  we moved away from our smallholding in 2016

As well as the monthly magazine they published many more books over the next 20 years. Including The Complete Book of Raising Livestock and Poultry.The magazine changed it's name to Home Farm as Self- Sufficiency fell out of fashion. It was later sold to a big publishing company and name changed again to Country Smallholding. It's still published all these years later.

Katie Thear (photo from obituary online) she died from Cancer in 2010 aged 70

 

She wrote several books about free- range poultry keeping and what was then the definitive book about keeping quail.

I've only got one of her books now "The Family Smallholding"

 

 

The book starts with the story of how they got to their smallholding and started publishing the magazine and then there are chapters about all the animals and birds they kept. I like maps and plans so enjoyed looking at their plan of their holding.

 

 

 

We had hoped to go to another open day there but because of their popularity and crowds and complaints from the villagers and the police they weren't able to have anymore.

 

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Racing Through April

 23rd and St Georges Day and England ought to celebrate our Patron Saint as much as other countries do but we don't and maybe it's too late now to start. And anyway he wasn't even English.

My week since the busy Easter weekend has involved putting the house back together after visitors, WI meeting, gardening, shopping and looking after the two nearest Grandchildren for a morning. We had a quiet morning, drawing, colouring and playing with the new chalks on the patio. I think all 3 of us were still recovering from the weekend get togethers. Apparently Youngest  Granddaughter complained that she'd not even had time to play with her new birthday toys! (Her 4th birthday on Easter Saturday- my 67th) .

I felt so guilty about the plight of bees after the WI talk (yesterdays post), that when cutting the grass I went round the 3 dandelions that had popped up on the lawn and also left two bits uncut. 

My young vegetable plants are now out in the greenhouse all the time but I'm covering them up with fleece at night and opening the windows and door during the day......either a little or a lot depending on the temperature. Fixing the automatic window opener is a priority when BiL is next here and getting another one sooner rather than later.

I'm also reading my way through the library books. Snooker is on TV and that's one of those things that keeps me company but doesn't need watching every minute so I can read too. This week I finished

Dorothy Whipple's book -  'Random Commentary'. which is taken from her diaries and notes.It's a Persephone Publication . The diaries were written between 1925 and the end of WWII during the time she wrote most of her novels. I've tried some of them but only managed Greenbanks but this diary is very readable, she gathered it together and published it just before her death in 1966.

I then whizzed my way through the latest Elly Griffiths - The Locked Room.  The 14th in the Dr. Ruth Galloway series. I enjoy all her books even though they seem to be a bit repetitive and predictable sometimes and am always grateful for borrowing them for free as they are written in a large type, double spaced, with much empty header and footer space to make a  large book costing £20. I'm sure they use way more paper than needed!

 

And finally  I've just finished reading a book from the Young Adult section of the library by Eve Ibbotson -  A Song for Summer. It's set mainly in Austria just before WWII and is the story of a young girl who after training as a chef goes to work in a very unusual school specializing in music and drama and English.

 It was mentioned on someones book blog and appealed to me, luckily the library had it in stock. It was even warm enough on Thursday afternoon to sit outside and read for an hour - lovely.

Rachel said I ought to explain how I get through books so quickly - I speed read - which to me is just normal reading! - but it means that my eyes don't need to see every word to read it, they read more than one word at a time just automatically. Perhaps I've always done it but didn't know it was speed reading until I was doing the Library Assistants City and Guilds course, where it was explained and taught and I found that my eyes hopped along the line of text, rather than going in a straight line.I believe my reading then got even more speedy.

This week I have been grateful for

• Being able to sing Jerusalem at WI again after all the covid fears
• Really good books 
• Sunshine for my plants.......and me
  

Have a good weekend. I'll be back Monday

Sue

 

W.I and The Forgotten Bees

 Another birthday posy from my village WI - the benefits of going to two!

Everyone felt safe enough (from covid threats) to sing Jerusalem at the start of the meeting which was good.

 

The speaker was brilliant and he gave a really good talk on "The Forgotten Bees"......that is all the hundreds of species of bee that are Not Honey Bees. In fact Honey Bees are causing all the other bees real problems because they carry some very nasty diseases and can get quite aggressive. He had photos from the US of Honey Bees unable to find enough food on their own attacking other bees and stealing pollen from their pollen sacs. 

More and more people are keeping bees but the way land is farmed means that there isn't enough food for them and gardeners prefer cut grass instead of dandelions and clover so we are no help either.

The speaker, who's appropriate name really is Hawk Honey, was a long distance truck driver until an injury forced him to find a new job and he now works part time for Suffolk Wildlife Trust and gives talks about bees and advises on gardening for wildlife.

He had slides and videos of some of the various different solitary bees - some only feed on one type of flower or one family of plants. So many bees are on the Red Endangered lists but there's still time to help them. We should grow a wide variety of flowers for our gardens and pick those that have easily accessed pollen......and (special note for Pat) dandelions are brilliant for bees.

My favourite bee of those he told us about - not sure of it's Latin name - was a solitary bee who makes it's home only in empty snail shells. It has to be laying on bare ground because this clever bee burrows under the shell taking out the soil so the shell sits in a little hollow. Then it lays its egg inside, closes up the shell and then..............covers it all with little twigs and dried grass - how amazing is that!

When I got home I searched out the bee chart that I'd got from Friends of the Earth last year, along with the wild flower seeds.

This is just a few of the bees we should be seeing.

After the talk there was coffee and cakes of course and one of the ladies had made Red Velvet Cup Cakes to celebrate her Ruby wedding, which were lovely. The last thing at WI is usually the raffle and what a surprise - I won something and picked a box of chocs rather than some soap!

 

 

 Quite a late ending as there had been lots of business to get through - arrangements for outings and other meetings and we sang The National Anthem at the end.

 

It's so good to get back to normal meetings and now it's nice just to have a 5 minute walk home from this WI. Something I've not been able to do since 1991.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Old Post Revisited

 Think this post  escaped drafts yesterday, much to my surprise- sorry if that confused everyone and thank you for comments yesterday about the latest batch of  car boot bargains. I think the comments made on this post yesterday might have survived.

 

 Been too busy over the last few days to sort out many posts, so this is just my favourite photo from my first blog. 

A view of our self-sufficient garden from the smallholding in May 2013

Colin stood on something on top of the big trailer to take it and managed to get everything in. Around the other side of the house was our orchard and over the hedge at the back was the 4 acre field where we had the Camping and Caravanning 5 van site and up to 180 free range chickens.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

The Easter Saturday Boot Sale

As it was my birthday I didn't feel at all guilty in taking myself off early to the Saturday boot-sale leaving youngest daughter and eldest granddaughter to get their own breakfast!

It was the busiest boot-sale of the year so far and even though I couldn't spend too long out I managed to spot a few useful things among the junk. 

3 birthday cards for 20p each, chalks for the grandchildren for £1. The decorating headbands set will be a handy craft for youngest granddaughter, also £1. The wasp trap is the plastic version of  the antique glass ones I wanted to buy from one of the Rural Bygones Auctions a few years ago - except they were a crazy price and this one was 50p! . The book is interesting as it's all about the origins of road names in my local town, it cost me 50p and you may notice something that really isn't the start of a collection. Honestly  - two Beswick birds is Not a collection. This is a £1 Wren to go with the Blue Tit that's in my Spring-on-the-bookshelves display. It won't be out collecting dust all the time - only for spring and I'm not buying anymore......I really don't do collections...........much!

Then quickly home as I'd promised Eldest Granddaughter she could help me open cards and unwrap presents. 

Back Tomorrow

Sue

An Extremely Busy Weekend

 When Eldest Daughter, Son in Law and the two boys come up from Surrey we try and get all of us together as much as possible. This weekend it was 6 adults, 4 children under 6 and the 6 month old baby on 3 days and  if you throw two birthdays and Easter egg hunts into the mix it all gets a bit busy!

 

The two five year old cousins tend to get a bit silly as 5 year olds do and the 4 year old cousin joins in too. Luckily the two year old tends to ignore them and do his own thing. The baby is a happy little chap..........most of the time!

It's all wonderful but exhausting.

 

As usual, always too busy to take photos, but it was a lovely birthday, lots of cards and chocolate and books. Thank you everyone.

 

Just one photo......... an updated peep at the newest member of the family, he was a baby at Christmas and now a little fella.

 

 

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Easter Is On The Bookshelf

I've added some bits to the bookshelf display for Easter.

I remembered the April plate, only a few days late and the egg cup and egg were among the collection of Easter bits that came from ebay in that first lockdown (I don't use ebay anymore - it wastes too much time and money!). The light-up chicks came from when I was helping at the charity shop and the tulips are all home grown.

Copied from one of my posts in previous years........

........Pagan traditions give us the English word Easter coming from the word Anglo Saxon word Eostre , meaning openings and that comes from the Saxon goddess of the dawn Eostre. 

 There are a couple of weather sayings for Easter which could have an impact on the harvest

 Rain on Good Friday or Easter Day, A good crop of hops, but a bad one of hay. 

If the sun shines on the altar during the service on Easter Day, there will be a good harvest . 

 Fair weather from Easter to Whitsuntide, butter will be cheap with cream on the side

 

The Surrey family are (hopefully) driving up to Suffolk tomorrow so I hope the fuel shortage situation will resolve itself soon(caused by protestors blocking the entrance to a fuel depot in Essex and some other places) I'm still OK at the moment but when I went shopping on Tuesday all 3 garages I passed had nothing. If we can all get fuel the whole family should be getting together on Saturday and Sunday. We have two birthdays to celebrate and a family meal out plus a mini Easter egg hunt or two so it will be a good but busy weekend.

Enjoy your Easter, fingers crossed for fair weather.

I'm taking a few days off the blog and will return next week. 

Sue

Family History

 Is it because of getting older that I've got more interested in family history? 

Years ago when all elderly relatives were still around to question I never even thought about asking what they knew about their families.

 

After my Mum died in 1999 my sister and Dad spent months tracking down his family tree. It helped him to get through after being a carer for Mum for many years. I knew they went back a long way on his maternal side of the family and I'm the keeper of  the family bible with lots of details of that part of the family too but I'd not realised they'd gone back to the early 1800's on the paternal side as well.

 

 My maiden surname is a fairly unusual name and the first time I walked through the churchyard over the road I spotted some graves with the surname and knew they were some sort of relation.

 

How the graves looked last July, the grass was cut in the autumn

 

I wrote about it HERE . The family have always been in Suffolk and tended to use the same forenames ...variations on George,  Edward, Edwin and Edgar but my sister was able to tell me they were our great, great, grandfather and grandmother. She brought over a copy of the family tree of that bit of our family.

 

My Grandad, also a George was born only a few months before this George died so wouldn't have known his Grandfather.

I wondered whereabouts in the village they'd lived so had a look on Ancestry website and from a census I found he was a farm labourer, living in a Tytes Lane, but there's no lane of that name in the village now. On the same page of the census is Hall Farm. It would seem likely that any farm cottages would have been somewhere in the region of the Hall. Which now looks like this........

 

 

 Hall Farm stands on it's own along a small road out of the village, no cottages anywhere around. I even looked on old Suffolk maps of the village, with no luck.

 

There is a lady in the village who goes to WI and over 60's and she's nearly 90 and has lived in the village all her life. Next time I see her I'll ask if she has any memories of a Tytes Lane. Tyte is also a local Suffolk surname so it's possible the lane was called that locally when a family of that name lived there and is now called something else.

What a happy co-incidence that I've come to live in the village where great, great grandparents lived so many years ago.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Christmas Crackers in April?

 Yes.

They were on my list of things to look out for at boot-sales so when I found some I bought them.  

The Merry Christmas window clingy thingy was in the box with the crackers, which had 10 in out of a possible 12. Also from the same house clearance people I found two more clay saucers and a pack of greaseproof paper. Gave £3 for those and the things for grandchildren were 50p each.

How's the list looking after a few weeks?

 Birthday cards that have granddaughter/grandson and an age

 Interesting looking books

 Herb plants - cheap sage and parsley 

Few plants for the plant stand (lost two over winter)✔ + clay saucers after the crash✔

Metal Dustbin ✔

 Duplo for middle grandson  (now has enough)

Lego for oldest Grandson

Barbie sized dolls clothes✔

Possible Christmas gifts 

Raffle prize for WI

Cheap New Funnel

Christmas Crackers✔

You never know.................. I might get to the end of the list before the end of the season.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

A Norfolk Author

I can't remember where I bought "No Halt at Sunset; The Diary of a Housewife" but I know the second of the two books.......... "Wheelbarrow Farm" came from Wigtown,  Scotland's Book Town, and I remember being excited to find it (this was before Amazon and Abebooks)

Elizabeth Harland wrote several books between 1936 and 1955 as well as running a farm. No Halt at Sunset was published in 1951 and is written in diary form covering the part of 1949 and 1950 when rationing was still in force it is about their move to a smallholding which she and her husband hoped to run commercially.

 

 

A Man's work ends at set of sun, A Woman's work is never done

 

 The dust jacket on my copy of Wheelbarrow Farm is very tatty, 

 

unfortunately the back is even worse so that a lot of her biographical details are missing.

She was born in Norfolk in 1904, started writing  early and got her first book published in 1936. Wheelbarrow Farm was published in 1954. There's no mention of whereabouts the farm she was running in the first book actually was....she called it Silford, but I found a note that said it was Sparham Hall N.W of Norwich.

Wheelbarrow Farm might be about the same farm but it's written as a story rather than a diary.

 

I found that her first book "Farmer's Girl" written during the war was well known in the US and there is a review in the New York Times.

Also this....................

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

Farmers Girl was republished in the US as recently as 2021.

I couldn't find out anything else about her, so I think that was a pen name.

Back Tomorrow

Sue