Review of the Year in Photos for 2024

 The traditional look back at some of the photos used on the blog in 2024. Just things I've enjoyed.

January 2024 and the Long Tailed Tits visited the bird feeders and I've not seen them since! I don't get to see many of the birds that I used to see at Clay Cottage or at the smallholding

In February I started my 'Reading the Seasons sort-of a Challenge'. I read books I might not have read normally and Spring and Summer went well. Not many Autumn books and I've only read 1 with winter in the title so far.

In March Stowmarket Church had a Cross Festival for Easter, so I went to look. I'm still often having coffee and cheese scone in the Osier Cafe in the Church. A nice place to have a coffee.

At the end of  April the Following a Tree monthly posts had a photo of the fresh green leaves on the Oaks up the lane not far from home.

In May I visited more Churches for my ongoing trek around Suffolk's village churches - when there is a flower festival it means the church is definitely open, so a good opportunity for photos

 

In June I visited one of many Art Exhibitions held in Suffolk. This one was at Debenham church.

In July we had a General Election. The Green Party Candidate was voted in for this new Constituency (made up of bits from 4 previous Constituencies). He hasn't been heard of since! We have a Labour Government and things are the same as ever - The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and everyone else struggles on as best as they can . The most scary thing is that this new Government don't seem to want our farmers to provide food for the country.

Predictions both wrong!

The best thing about August was the holiday with the family on the Isle of Wight. Granddaughter had hoped the ferry would have bedrooms! We saw a Huge Virgin Holidays Cruise Liner heading out from Southampton as we were going into Portsmouth - it looked as if it had so many bedrooms you would need GPS to find your own.!

September and just  two of the library book photos that have been on the blog in 2024 . Books I've reserved and collected and many people like to get ideas for their reading so I'll be doing it again of course .

October and the best Butternut Squash harvest since living here. I've used them for batch cooking vegetable curry and in lasagne and roasted  and still have some left.

In November I made Red Hot Tomato Chutney. Didn't make many other chutneys/relishes this year as I don't eat much now, and didn't do Christmas Hampers for Sister and Sister in Law this year

And finally the December photo is after a while spent in the kitchen yesterday. I made a loaf of 50/50 whole meal/white bread (actually it was the bread maker that did the work!) Two baked scotch eggs using up 4 chipolatas that I didn't need on Boxing day and 3 portions of celery soup using the outside bits and tops and bottoms of a head of celery. I also sliced up 4 small lemons for the freezer because I woke up on the 27th with no voice and a sore throat and searched both freezers for lemons to do hot honey and lemon throat soother drink, and there weren't any. So they were quickly added to my very short shopping list for the 28th and now I'm ready for the next time I talk too much!.

(I've put that Wartime Christmas Pudding recipe on the Recipes page just in case anyone wants to try it)

And that's another year gone- where,........... I don't know!

Back in 2025.........tomorrow.

Sue

The Books Read in 2024

 A Grand Total of  104  books read in 2024, compared to 124 in 2023, so down a lot - no idea why.

These were divided into:-

24 Fiction (including 1 book of short stories) 

45 Crime Fiction More recently written  (roughly in the last 50 years) 

20 Crime Fiction written many years ago and often re-published by British Library Crime Classics (this includes 6 collections of short stories)

12 Non Fiction 

3 Children's books

My Reading the Seasons 'Challenge' had me reading books I wouldn't have read normally and the details of all those are HERE

Below are details of some of my favourites from the year.   All I read are on the separate Books Read 2024 page

• Evie Woods -The Lost Bookshop. Fiction (Published 2023) This story moves between two timelines, three countries and three different people. In the 1920's Opaline Carlisle runs away from London to France to avoid marrying the man her brother is forcing her to marry. In modern day Dublin Martha has at last got away from her abusive husband and Henry is searching for information about a book and a bookshop to make his name as a book dealer. A really good story with magic and history.
• Rumer Godden -  The Peacock Spring. Fiction. (Published 1975). 15 year old Una and 12 year old Hal are summoned from their English boarding school to start a new life with their diplomat father in India. When Una discovers their beautiful governess Alix is actually her father's mistress, she is furious and starts spending time with the mysterious gardener Ravi.
• Rob Rinder - The Trial. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023). The first crime story by the well known barrister, writer and TV personality. It was a very good story inspired by his own experiences. Hero policeman Grant Cliveden dies from a poisoning in the Old Bailey. The evidence is clear and points to one man. This is trainee barrister Adam Green's first big case defending Jimmy Knight who has much history with Cliveden in the past.
• Molly Clavering -  Mrs Lorrimer's Quiet Summer. Fiction (Published 1953 - A DSP Furrowed Middlebrow reprint 2021).Mrs Lorrimer is an author with 4 grown children and this story takes her through a summer in the Scottish borders when she is between books . She worries about all her children and their families and has them all to stay, meets the new people who've just moved in, has a great friendship with Grace Douglas, another author. The book is almost autobiographical as Clavering lived in Scotland and was great friends with author D.E. Stevenson.
• R.F.Delderfield - The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon. Fiction (Published 1963) Nowadays it would be called a 'Mid Life Crisis' - the day that Mr Sermon walks out of his job - at a second rate prep school and his family - who don't seem to need him anymore, and hops on a train and finds himself in a seaside town many miles from London. In the weeks that follow he discovers he is much more useful than he thought as he gets to learn about auctions and second-hand furniture, rescues a child from the sea, becomes a beach superintendent, saves a coach load of tourists from being stranded and also becomes aware that women find him very interesting. Without my Reading the Seasons challenge I would never had read this and I enjoyed it immensely.
• Anthony Horowitz - Close to Death. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) This is the 5th in the Hawthorne and Horowitz mysteries in which he writes himself into a fictional story that Private Investigator ex policeman has been involved with. The stories are so good that it's sometimes difficult to remember they are fiction. This one is about a death from the past set in a close of houses in the up market area of Richmond -on -Thames.
• Rory Clements - Munich Wolf. Crime Fiction (Published 2024). Munich 1935 and the city is a favourite of Hitler and some of his cronies as well as attracting young and rich people from Great Britain to learn German. When an English girl is murdered Detective Sebastian Wolff is ordered to solve the crime - and quickly. Wolff is already walking a tightrope between falling foul of the secret police and doing his job without upsetting anyone high up in the Nazi party. Is there anyone left to trust in Munich?
• Kristin Hannah - The Women. Fiction. (Published 2024). 1965 and Frances 'Frankie' McGrath ships out to Vietnam to work as a nurse in the Vietnam war . Her brother is her fathers favourite and declared a hero as he goes out to fight. Frankie has only just qualified and landing in Vietnam is like landing in Hell. Luckily her two bunk mates have been there a while and help her to settle in. This is the untold story - based on facts - of Frankie's years there, she falls in love, learns to become a really good nurse and copes with the dreadful conditions.  When she goes home it isn't to a heroes' welcome but finds her father was too embarrassed to say where she was and no one understands what nurses went through - or even believes there were women working there. A wide sweeping well written story.
• Lissa Evans - Small Bomb at Dimperley. Fiction. (Published 2024). In 1945 Corporal Valentine Vere-Thisset is on his way home. Home is Dimperley a vast and dilapidated country house, built in the 1500's, with many odd additions and now up to it's eaves in debt. Following the death of his heroic older brother Valentine is now Sir Valentine and responsible for it all and frankly terrified.Zena Baxter doesn't see Dimperley as a wreck because, after being evacuated there with her small daughter, it's the first real home she has ever known.Zenas husband is still abroad and after evacuees go home she stays at Dimperley as Alarics secretary.
• Robert Harris - Precipice. Fiction (Published 2024).  I had no interest in the WWI Prime Minister H.H. Asquith and his correspondence  with a woman less than half his age during the start of the war, but Robert Harris writes so well that it's impossible not to get drawn in. This story, as are many of his books, is fiction but built around fact.
• Stella Gibbons - The Woods in Winter. Fiction. (First Published 1970 DSP reprint 2021) Ivy Gover is a middle aged lady with witchy type skills with animals and when she inherits a dilapidated cottage in Buckinghamshire she moves there with a rescued dog. Gradually she has surprising effects of her new neighbours and the 13 year old boy who turns up in her garden. The story is set just before WWII although the final chapter is 40 years later in the 70's.

I wonder what the library van will bring me in 2025............Which favourite authors will publish new books? Will I find new authors?

 Lots to look forward to.

Back Soon 

Sue

That Wartime Christmas Pudding

  Not  made in wartime! but using the wartime recipe that I wrote about on the 23rd HERE.

 I didn't try it myself before Boxing Day and reheated portions in the microwave for me and BiL [after making him read the blog page about it so he knew what he was letting himself in for!] It was absolutely delicious, especially with custard and cream. Light and fruity and plenty sweet enough despite the very little sugar.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Were the Carboot Bargains Useful?

 A couple of years ago when someone said my house must be full of car boot stuff that I'd squirrelled away, I looked back through old posts to remind me of  what I'd bought - and if the things had been used...........they had, so it was OK .........I wasn't turning into a hoarder!

Seems there were fewer finds this year than other years but I'm filling a post by doing it again.........

The six year old coffee that tasted fine from a March boot sale, later broke the glass bit of the cafeteria when I accidently knocked it into the sink.

Grandchildren things and plastic food bags. The pie dishes turned out to be too big for one meal but too small for two and I gave them to a charity shop.

Cards and a vase - all useful - the vase has my Christmas bunch of flowers at the moment.

More cards........

A Portmeirion vase, this is a dust collector but I forgive it as it's pretty!

The little print I found, then later found a frame for it, also from car-boot. It's up on the 'art wall'

The very useful flour storage which is storing flour!

Christmas wrapping paper, food bags, gloves and a puzzle - I got cross with the puzzle ! and gave it to DiL.

The other stuff is all useful.

And the final things from earlier this month at the one-off December car-boot. We pulled 3 of the crackers Christmas Day and Granddaughter tried the racing sleighs inside. 

I'm quite surprised...................not many things found at all.

Still good fun to look round - you never know what treasures are at a car-boot sale.

First boot sales in 2025 will probably be in March, last year they were late starting due to all the wet weather and flooding. Not so wet this winter............. so far.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Presents and Cards

 I had some lovely Christmas cards, didn't need to hide any away! 

Good pressies

Got myself the Folklore Diary after a break of a few years (and gave it to BiL to wrap as my present from him!)

The Folklore Diary and the book 'Everyday Folklore', in that pile of books above are going to be used a lot on blogs in 2025 - you have been warned 😃

The three children all chipped in to get me a new lamp for the living room. This means I can move my old reading light from behind the settee to behind my chair and avoid having the ceiling lights on (that's the ridiculous 10 lightbulbs-all-at-once ceiling lights!)

It's one of those lights with two lights and came in a box in bits, with loads of cardboard all around and yesterday took BiL an hour or more to put together. Thank heavens he is brilliant at working things out as I'd never have managed it.

I fed him well with dinner and tea and he joined me with the first of the chocolate liqueurs later - heavens know what effect that had on his diabetes!

Back Soon

Sue

Boxing Day

 .............................................isn't a holiday in most parts of the world............so Lucky Us! 

 Boxing Day became a "thing" around the 1830's and the name comes from the custom of giving  "Christmas boxes" to servants and apprentices and the tradesmen who delivered to the house. 

This below is from the book 'Cattern Cakes and Lace' by Julia Jones and Barbara Deer, and has a bit more explanation about the 26th and a gruesome story of the custom of 'Hunting the Wren'.

And then I came across this song

Boxing Day in Mid Suffolk is much less violent!

(much of this post is repeated from many years ago, so you might have seen it before!)

Many thanks for all the Happy Christmas wishes yesterday. It was lovely to have Youngest Daughter and Eldest Granddaughter here. They went home before dark as it turned very foggy. I then quickly popped over to see Son, DiL and the two grandchildren who have DiL's sister staying with her partner and gorgeous little fella Sunny who is coming up to one year old. He was asleep but still nice to say hello to the grown ups. I could have gone over to Sister in Laws but by then it was dark and very foggy. Fog in the country is different to fog in town! and I don't like driving in dark and fog, it's easy to lose the road edges.

So home to watch the Strictly Christmas Special and Doctor Who. I love the BBC feature of the green button which puts the programme back to beginning - it's so handy.

If you didn't get to see 'Doctor Who at the Proms' which was on TV on Christmas Eve, (and possibly on earlier in the year too) it's worth a watch, the music was fantastic.

Back Soon

Sue

Happy Christmas!

 

Thank you to everyone who writes, reads and comments.

Hope you have the best possible Christmas.

Sue

Advent 2024 and Christmas Eve

What to write about today?

Part of  the population (Women!) are rushing around getting all the things that are on the 'to do' list crossed off, that's after going out for last minute food shopping by 8am.

Another part of the population (Men!) are wondering if what they have bought for presents - that's if they've actually got  around to buying presents - is going to be the right thing?

And the small children are so hyped up that there will be "tears before bedtime" for sure

And the teenagers are still in bed - and probably will be for most of the day!

***********************

I thought I'd find some you tube Christmas things to watch when everything on the list has been done.

The Wartime Farm Christmas 1944

Here's a short clip from the Christmas edition of The Good Life from 1977

The whole episode is funny but I couldn't get it to copy to here.

And from the beautiful Bealtaine Cottage in Ireland

Have a good nights sleep and don't forget to feed Father Christmas!

Back Tomorrow - briefly

Sue

and a PS - I heard big machinery and looked out the front door and zoomed in for this photo of the giant sugar beet harvester gathering in the sugar beet from up the lane where I walk for the oak photos. It was working in the rain but still got the whole field done in less than day.

Advent 2024 and The Unplanned Christmas Pudding

 With the change of plans for Christmas it meant 'proper Christmas' meals needed on two different days instead of just one day. 

This half packet of vegetable suet (bought last winter for dumplings but still OK) had to be moved or  fell out of the cupboard 

every time I got anything else out and gave me an idea. .................................BiL is traditional and likes Christmas Pudding, I don't particularly, but could eat some but not the huge rather solid recipe I've used through umpteen years of Christmas Pudding making. I looked in several books for a pudding recipe that uses as little as possible, didn't need making weeks beforehand and could be made with just 2½oz of suet and then had a brainwave to look in the Wartime books - when rations limited the amount and range of things that could be used - and found something in this book.

The list of ingredients were simply breadcrumbs, flour, a little suet, minimal sugar, grated carrot and apple, sultanas and raisons and a few prunes plus just 1 egg and and optional alcohol. Most of these are in the house all the time and I separated the raisons from a packet of the value range Aldi peanuts and raisons (peanuts used for biscuits) I bought some prunes which I like but hadn't eaten for ages, so the remainder will be good.

Even with a small amount it was enough for 1 small basin and another even smaller, which I made and steamed yesterday.

Now the question is - do I leave until Boxing Day to re-steam and force BiL to try it or shall I reheat the very small one and try it myself today, just in case?

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Advent 2024 and the Meaning of the Evergreens

 I went all over the place to find the evergreen bits to bring in for the Winter Solstice. I wanted as many different things that it's possible to have in a Mid Suffolk winter.

Bay from my own small Bay tree in a big pot in the back garden.

 Bay was used to aid healing and protected from lightening, snakebite, disease and witchcraft. Sacred to the Romans and worn by their emperors, heroes and poets. It was planted by the house door to keep away plague.

Holly with just a few berries from a back lane near where I used to live and I also snipped a couple of bits of variegated holly from the car park of a village hall on my way home from town on Thursday.

In Roman times Holly was given as a gift during Saturnalia. A Holly tree planted near the door protects from storm, fire and the Evil Eye. A holly collar protected a horse from witchcraft and coach men preferred whips with holly wood handles. Chilblains were cured by being whipped with a holly branch.

I stopped at the churchyard in the same village in the hope that some mistletoe would have been blown down from the huge churchyard trees and got lucky as there was a branch down, including mistletoe, although it must have been down a while as  most had lost it's leaves. There was one berry! 

Mistletoe - the most mysterious and magical plant, a parasitic plant suspended between earth and sky famous since the Druids. It symbolised peace and hospitality and the berries were used in love potions and kissing under it was once a fertility rite, rather than just fun!

A piece of Yew from one of the many Yew trees over the road in the Churchyard in my village.

 Yews have been planted in churchyards for many 100 years, although exactly the reason for the connection is not known, but it is thought they were sacred to pagans who had used the site before Christianity and they were often used as the spot for village meetings. They were thought to symbolise eternal life and cutting them down would bring death.

And Ivy growing on a post also in the churchyard, although it's everywhere of course.

Sacred to the Gods of wine it would hang outside a vintners premises to show that good wine could be had there (ale houses had a bush hanging outside)There is a traditional rivalry between the holly and the ivy. The holly is masculine and the ivy is feminine. Ivy leaves soaked in vinegar are said to be a cure for corns and whooping cough in children could be cured if they drank from a ivy-wood bowl.

And finally a piece of Rosemary also from the churchyard, didn't need secateurs for this as it was half broken and hanging down so not really 'stealing', just tidying!

Rosemary was both sacred and magical. Tradition says it had white flowers until the Virgin Mary spread Christ's  clothes on it to dry during the flight into Egypt. Tudor brides always carried rosemary in their bridal wreaths. Rosemary was once put into the hands of the deceased and mourners would carry rosemary to throw into the grave.

And altogether in the living room

There were some small bits left for another jar full which is on the kitchen windowsill. 

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Advent 2024 and The Winter Solstice

Today, with the fewest hours of daylight, is the day to go out and fetch greenery to bring into the house, to encourage the return of the sun.

The tradition of bringing greenery into the home goes back a Very long way. This would have been the only decoration available to the poorest homes.

And even earlier each plant had a meaning.........Holly was a symbol of everlasting life and fertility, Ivy was an anti-witching plant with medicinal values, Rosemary was holy and magical and Bay was sacred to Apollo and Aescutapious, the God of medicine. Mistletoe was also associated with fertility and used by Druids in their ceremonies.

Christmas wreaths made of greenery are also ancient, thought to date back to Roman times when they decorated homes during Saturnalia. The wreath is thought to be a symbol of the wheel of the year. (The word Yule is usually thought to come from the Nordic word jol but may come from their word for wheel.......houl).

I've included this a few times on the day of the Winter Solstice but not for a year or two, so here it is again.

Susan Cooper is an author best known for a series of fantasy novels for children

And I've had this book for at least 3 years and still not got around to reading it, must make an effort this year despite having all the good library books to get through.

It has 12 stories from various countries that have been passed down through the generations.

(Anyone in the BBC Look East area would have seen that they featured the Christmas Tree Festival at Stowmarket, that I visited a couple of weeks ago, on the programme last night, it really was the best ever in all the years I've been visiting)

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Advent 2024 and Tempting Shelves and Bargain Veg.

 It's no wonder people spend more than normal at Christmas time when the shelves are full of specially packaged food that looks so festive.

Everything is Christmassy red. This is Aldi but all the supermarkets have their aisles of Seasonal items, tons of chocolates everywhere. This was yesterday, so still plenty left for Christmas.

Have to say the thought of Pumpkin flavoured coffee doesn't get  me excited!

I went to Aldi to get the bargain pre-Christmas Veg. Despite feeling guilty, as I expect they've cut the price paid to farmers too. But at least it's all British ( apart from the broccoli which I discovered comes from Spain).

Broccoli, carrots, parsnips and potatoes all just 8p a bag! Some years I can't take advantage of these specials as I've needed them a week before, and being on my own a bag of carrots lasts me two or three weeks, and potatoes last me more than a month,  but this time it's worked out just right. I don't buy extra to freeze either - it wouldn't be worthwhile. 

Back Tomorrow

Sue