Flowers and Books Or Books and Flowers

 As mentioned the other day I went to the Flower Festival with stalls at Crowfield Church mainly for their second hand book stall. I also got some cheap plums from their produce stall, ate a few but added the rest to the freezer for the next batch of compost/mixed fruit jelly. It's mainly apple peels and cores but adding some whole cheap fruit means it makes a bit more jelly with a better colour.

Just found two books this time (I'm beginning to think that they save the books from year to year!) and it was threatening rain and so dark and gloomy in the church and very busy that I didn't take any good photos of the Flower Festival which had a theme of 'Desert Island Discs'

I've just finished the Evie Woods book - The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris-  borrowed from the library. I enjoyed it and had read another two of her books a few years back. They all have a bit of mystery and magic about them. This one sounds similar. All books were for sale for 50p each.

With the flower festival theme of Desert Island Discs, some people went for Islands, others for people who had featured on the radio programme and others choose their own music or a luxury item that they would take to an island themselves.

There was a leaflet with details of the villagers who created the lovely arrangements but I handed that back on my way out and the notes on each display with a number and  details were very small and I didn't get them in the photos. So apologies to the brilliant florists!

Just editing in to say that it seems Bloggers latest blip is not being able to publish comments anywhere! Hopefully short term.  I've tried to comment on several blogs this morning but no luck.

Second Hand Book Sale at Sibton Church

 I have no idea where a very small village finds so many books for a three day sale every year but it's always good to go and have a look.

But I looked and looked through hundreds of books and came away with just two, spending £2.50.

Marjorie Fleming by Oriel Malet, Persephone number 17 to add to my Persephone collection and a little book about Suffolk Churches. It's got all the details that are on Simon Knott's  Suffolk Churches Index but in a much shorter form. I'm going to highlight the churches already visited and then keep it in the car - it will be handy to have for reference when out and about.

The little church book has no publication date and some of the information about churches already visited seemed out of date so I looked online and found it was published in 1998, and there's a copy on Amazon for £48. I entered the ISBN into the 'We Buy Books' website and they are offering 50p for it. Not a lot of difference then! I can't begin (be bothered) to work out what  % mark up that is.

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Out of curiosity I added my blog to the 'Blogs I Read' list just to see how it updates there, some days seem better than others for updates, everyone is finding the same  - I blame it on the weather...................I always blame things on the weather!  But it won't stop me writing blog posts.

 And talking about things on the side bar .....I need 13 people to click the follower button just so that annoying moving gif thing that someone used as their profile thingy would move out of sight - it's very annoying.

*4.40 in the afternoon and just editing in to say Thank you - the annoying flickering gif has been pushed out of sight. Welcome to all the new followers. *

Back Tomorrow

F is for Fundraisers

 For every group, every charity, every village,  fundraising is key to keeping things going. My favourite sort of fundraiser is a charity book sale - of course!

 I miss jolly old jumble sales which was the way most fund raising was done in the 70's and 80's with a special Christmas sale each December - Father Christmas in attendance. With Scouts we also had a wonderful summer fete with a knobbly knee competition  and plate smashing was always popular too, and we were one of the first places to run a car boot sale.

For many years I travelled down to Colchester each October for the giant NSPCC book sale, but this year I just couldn't be bothered- even though it's the last one they were going to have after 20 years - and here is the problem in so many places - it's  often retired people who keep things going and they get older and run out of energy. There was a worrying message on a local Facebook page that the village hall where we have our Keep Moving Group urgently needs more people for the their management committee, as the treasurer and bookings clerk have been doing their jobs for years and would like a break. 

Where are the 30 and 40 year old's with energy? 

So I didn't go to the big Colchester book sale to start November  but I did visit one in Suffolk, a fundraiser for their Village Hall, they always have a nice lot of books. These are what I found. No grey cover Persephone books again but these below are interesting and there at the bottom of the pile is one to add to one of my other collections - The Little Toller Nature Classics series. I've read the one on the top of the heap but don't own a copy and it's a war time mystery so will be a good one to keep.

Just like the shops who have to make much of their profits at this time of the year, the run up to Christmas is peak time for fundraising for villages and groups too, hence the huge number of Christmas Fairs coming up.

There is a lovely list of local Fairs to visit to cheer up my November and December weekends, I might not spend much but I do need to find a few Christmas gifts this year as it's not been a successful year for finding things at boot sales.

My diary has filled up with ideas for places to visit....................

November 8th Monks Eleigh or Stuston; 

15th/16th Diss or Stowupland or  Eye;

 22nd/23rd Haughley or Otley;

 29th/30th Burgate, Stoke Ash, Thorndon, Debenham, Finborough or Stowmarket.

 December 6th/7th Cotton, Wetherden, Stonham, Mendlesham, Thornham Walled Garden or Rickinghall.

Then everything comes to a halt!

How many can I manage to get to? Will I have coffee and cake at some? - Not all! that would be silly.

Are there as many Christmas Fairs and sales in other places or is it just here?

Back Soon

Church Book Sale

Pouring rain early morning meant I didn't go to the last car boot of the season at Needham Market, there wouldn't have been many there if I had gone. Instead I journeyed to a village called Acton in South Suffolk after blog reader Jan told me the date of their book sale in the church. They hold this twice a year and I've always missed out before. The church pews and many tables were full of books, mainly fiction which I skimmed for grey Persephone books or old crime novels without any luck. 

But from among the non fiction I picked up half a dozen. I've chopped the top off the book at the back but its a 1990 facsimile of a book from 1899 called 'The Book of Shops' with illustrations by Francis Bedford and verses by E.V. Lucas.  

Two pages below from the Shops book

The one at the bottom on my windowsill  is called 'Suffolk Strange But True' chapters about odd happenings, lost villages and Suffolk mysteries and above that 'Tatterlegs for Tea' by David Woodward  is a follow up to his book about Suffolk dialect which I already have. This little book has Suffolk stories collected with a few verses. The Nature of Autumn and The Nature of Winter are both by Jim Crumley and share his love of the seasons and what he finds in them. The sixth book 'Four Walks in English Rain' is by Melissa Harrison who has written many books about wellbeing.

Blog reader Jan, who lives just over the Essex border and brought me snowdrops several years ago, somehow recognised me among all the crowd which was a surprise. I'm hopeless at recognising people only seen once! 

I couldn't do photos of Acton Church, much too full of books and people, I planned to visit Chilton church before going home but couldn't find it! (Turns out to be across a field behind Chiltern Hall and is closed at the moment anyway, a good thing I didn't find it as it was too cold for walking far) 

So I thought I'd call in at Great Waldingfield church on my way back but they were having a special heritage weekend so the church was full of people and display boards making that  a no - no too. But I did manage a visit to the church in Little Waldingfield on my way through, by which time  I was getting so cold and glad to go straight off home, especially as by then I was feeling very grotty again.

Back on antibiotics - doctor visit  booked for later in the week. 

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Flower Festival

 My annual visit to Crowfield Church on their Flower Festival weekend, they also have a second-hand book stall. But this year, although there were dozens of books on the tables, I only picked up these two.

The gazebo on the left has hundreds of books while on the right they have dozens of jigsaw puzzles and a few children's books

The theme of the Flower Festival was 'Time' and there were some lovely arrangements and clever ideas.

'Time Rolls On'

"Time is like a toilet roll, the nearer you get to the end, the faster it goes"

                                                    The white rabbit in Wonderland

"I'm Late"

Time and Tide

"Time and Tide wait for no one"

Harvest Time

(I was interested to see the local produced sheep's cheese on this display, made not far from home for the last couple of years but first time I'd heard about it. I looked up the stockists and hope to buy some  soon for a cheese taste test)

'Past Present and Future'

"Yesterday is the past, Tomorrow is the future, but Today is a gift which is why it is called 'The Present'.

A stitch in time was a large display by the local craft club

'Once in a Blue Moon'

These were just a few of the lovely arrangements. I say it every year but there are some very talented people around.

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Most People are Good People and The Missing Library Van but It's OK.

When you read about the terrible things some people do to others it's lovely to know that on the whole most people are good people. That's what everyone agreed after yesterdays post. Thank you again Lisa.

The grandchildren were here yesterday and very excited to visit the library van with me  - except it didn't turn up! Later I found out that due to illness it was off the road. They had emailed but the connections were so bad yesterday morning that the email didn't get to me until late afternoon. I should have been collecting 15 books - aaaaagggghhhhh .....NOTHING TO READ!

 (Poor connection might explain why the French Open tennis on TV wasn't working properly most of yesterday too) 

But as Granddaughter said "Nanna you've got about 5,000 books at home!" - she's exaggerating........... ..................fortunately or unfortunately?!

However there are four more than there were a week ago as these were the books I found at the charity book sale at Sibton church last Saturday.

 

Top of the pile is book by local author Olivia Laing it's all about her new garden and other gardens. I could borrow it from the library but then I'd probably not get round to reading it as there are usually so many crime to read and I have to be in the right mood for non-fiction, so it will be waiting for when I'm ready.

Pleased with the copy of Seal Morning by Rowena Farre as I wrote about re-reading her other book in March, its years since I read this book and the library don't have a copy.

From the cover Eve's War looked like fiction but it is a genuine WWII diary - another to add to my collection.

Someone somewhere - probably one of the book bloggers - mentioned The Far Country by Nevil Shute quite recently and I checked the library but they didn't have a copy. I read all his books way back in my early library days but that was 50 years ago. I looked on abebooks and even put a copy in my 'saved for later' list. It was £4 plus postage and I thought I'd wait a while and what a good thing I didn't buy it.

The book at the bottom I picked up as it has photos of hundreds of small metal things found by Metal Detectorists - Bronze age through to Tudor times, I though Son might like a look at it - it might not be something he wants or he might have seen it already. (He hadn't seen it before so was very interested to take it home yesterday)

After conversations with someone in the library office in Ipswich I'm hoping that my 15 books can be put on the delivery van and dropped at Stowmarket library for me to collect. Otherwise it's going to be a long wait until the end of  June. 

 

Back Soon

Sue

Second-hand Book Sale

I said No Spend November wouldn't be taken very seriously!

 Instead of trekking down the A12 to Colchester for the big NSPCC  second-hand book sale on Saturday, which I've visited every year for many years,  I went just across to near the coast for the much, much smaller charity book sale at Westleton - raising money for their village hall. It's just a shame they are both the same weekend.

 I  picked out these few to look through- one perhaps for interesting bits for cutting up for my old fashioned scrapbooks. Plus another book I'll write about later in the week. It was £1 to get in and the 5 books were £4. I don't think I've seen any of them before as they are all several years old.

Had breakfast before going out so didn't need to partake of the coffee and cakes!.......sadly.

No spend (?) November so far

Direct Debits                          £242

Book Sale                               £    5 }

Church donation                    £     1 }      My accounting means these all go in the Charity part 

British Legion Poppy Appeal £    2 }        of the account book.

Back soon

Sue

A Picture For the Art Wall, Books and Birthday Cards

 Found this little print at the Stonham Barns car boot sale on Bank Holiday Sunday.  

It was disgustingly dusty and dirty with thunder flies under the glass but as I seem to have two or three duck/geese/swan pictures on the wall it will make a nice addition. I took it apart and gave the glass a good clean. The signature says Penny Cox and the title is 'Coming Out To Play George'. I looked on line and there are several pictures of her other work - and more of George, but mostly for sale in the US. I'm not sure that this is a genuine print from the artist as the 'George' looks to have been added later. But no matter - it fits in well. £2 spent.

Haven't got it on the wall yet - painting to do first.

Picked up 4 more greetings cards for future for 10p each - handy.

I then went a mile or so down the road to Crowfield Church where they have a Flower Festival and fundraising stalls every August BH weekend. It's something I usually visit because of the good second-hand book stall. It's had a mention on the blog every year.

There was a service in the church so I didn't take photos of the flower festival this year but I found 3 books for 50p each that looked interesting, one might be a bit too cosy crime but Apple Tree Cottage was the name we gave the house we completely renovated back in the early 1980's so I had to buy it!

Back Soon 

Sue

G is for Giant Second-hand Book Sale

 Last month the Giant  NSPCC second-hand book sale moved this year from the gymnasium of a private prep school just outside of Colchester to the much bigger gymnasium of a secondary school just inside Colchester. I was glad of the sat nav on my phone as there were several mini roundabouts between the A12 and the school and I took the wrong exit on one of them. I was still there in plenty of time to join the queue to get in. There seemed to be lots of dealers this year and I had a chat with a couple in the queue who had travelled here from Gloucestershire - they sell online, have a warehouse and keep 5 people employed I was told! The trouble with dealers is they go in and will grab big handfuls of books on their favoured subjects - often buying a couple of hundred books in half an hour. I know that to the NSPCC their money is as good as anyone's but they are annoying!.

Somehow I found a good heap of books - no surprise there then! After all the posts about Sutton Hoo it was really odd to find a copy of both 'The Dig' and one mentioned by Sarah 'Burial Ground of Kings'. Plus I found a book that I'd added to my wish list after doing the post about my WWII Home Front Collection. One or two that I brought home are not quite what I thought they were (there's no room, and such crowds of people, it's very difficult to have a proper look at things found) but all in all I was very pleased with my haul. Only a couple were more than £1.50 and most were £1. And I can count the spending as a donation to a worthwhile charity!

 

Almost all non-fiction  this year, although there were lots of fiction there  and I skimmed over the boxes looking for grey Persephone covers - not a single one and nothing else of note except the book by Willa Cather - I've enjoyed a few of her books in the past.

Close to the bottom of this heap is a book called 'Once Upon a Farm' which has lovely illustrations by the author Bob Artley of his life growing up on farm in Ohio in the 1940's. I admit to buying this and the one above it 'England is a Garden' by Catherine Hamilton simply because of the art work.

I'm not sure how we first heard about this annual book sale although I know it was back in the days we were buying  second hand country and farming books and selling them at our Suffolk Smallholders Show and a couple of other shows each year. That's more than 15 years ago now but my eyes still automatically go to books with titles like 'Small Scale Sheep Keeping' and 'Hens and Eggs'. I have to stop myself picking them up! 

Hopefully I'll be there in the queue again next year - last Saturday of half term week - see you there!

Back tomorrow

Sue

The Flowers and Books at Crowfield Church

 As mentioned on Saturday I went to the flower festival at Crowfield church mainly for the bookstall 😃

The theme of the Flower Festival this year was Children's Nursery Rhymes and Poems and I took some photos because I'm always impressed by flower arranging which is something I've never learned to do. (Didn't photograph all the arrangements as there were 30+ around this small church.)

The guide leaflet had the history of some of the rhymes which was interesting.

Hickory Dickory Dock below, was first found published in 1744. It might have been based on a clock in Exeter Cathedral 

Old MacDonald had a Farm, below. The earliest version dates from 1706 in an opera called "The Kingdom of the Birds or Wonders of the Sun"

The Owl and The Pussy Cat, below, is one of Edward Lear's nonsense poems from 1871.

Ten Green Bottles, below, is a very old counting song going back as far as the C14. (We sang this endlessly at Primary School!)

Hey Diddle Diddle, The Cat and the Fiddle, below, is thought to date back to at least C16 and gave rise to many Cat and Fiddle pub names.

Ring-a-ring of Roses, below, probably composed in the late C17 and may refer to the Plague with the roses being a red rash and the sneezing being an symptom.

And each side of the porch a Teddy Bears Picnic was happening. The melody was composed in 1907 and lyrics added in 1932.

Outside they had a tombola and plant stalls and of course the big gazebo full of  second-hand books. Not as many books as they sometimes have, although they'd got lots in boxes under the table which they said they would put out later when they had room - which always seems an odd thing to me as they can't sell books unless people can see them!

Anyway, I picked up four for 50p each =  a Persephone - Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski, another of Alexander McCall Smith's stand alone books - My Italian Bulldozer (what a curious title!), H.E Bates -Fair Stood The Wind For France and a children's book just because I liked the picture on the front cover. The book is a bit tatty so after it's been read I'll probably add that cover picture to my scrapbook.

The Church is open everyday so I will go back for a proper Church visit and then I'll carry on through the back road to Coddenham because Crowfield was a Chapel of Ease to Coddenham well into the 20th Century.

A chapel of ease (or chapel-of-ease) is a church building other than the parish church, built within the bounds of a parish for the attendance of those who cannot reach the parish church conveniently, generally due to distance away. Often a chapel of ease is deliberately built as such, being more accessible to some parishioners than the main church.

Back Tomorrow

Sue 

Three Books from the Book Sale

 Last Saturday,  before we all met up near the River Deben to search for Shark Teeth* and the adjacent  pub for a meal, I called in at a Charity Second-hand Book Sale being held in the church of a nearby village.

Sometimes book sales in villages are billed as a Giant Book Sale and have about 3 dozen books but all the pews in this small church were covered in books so there were a good amount to search through.

The three I found were these

'South Facing Slope' by Carla Carlisle is the story of turning a Suffolk Estate and farm into a successful Vineyard and farm shop. 'Ask the Fellows Who Cut The Hay' by George Ewart Evans is now a classic, being a history of a Suffolk village written from the conversations the author had with old people around the village of Blaxhall near the Suffolk coast in the late 1950's. Finally 'Surviving the Iron Age' by Peter Firstbrook is a BBC book that went with a 2001 TV series. It charted the seven weeks a group of people spent living in Iron Age conditions of a hillfort in the Welsh countryside as people would have done around 300BC.

'South Facing Slope' and 'Ask the Fellows' will be turned into posts for the blog at sometime in the future.

*Ramsholt is one of the best locations for fossils in Suffolk, yielding sharks’ teeth, lobsters, fruit and shells from the London Clay, shells, sharks’ teeth from the Red Crag, corals, echinoids from the Coralline, and complete crabs, fish remains and sharks’ teeth from the basement bed.

Son had been told  it was remarkably easy to find fossilised shark teeth on one particular area of the banks of the Deben. Unfortunately there had been so much rain it was impossible to walk along the footpath and edges of the River - Mud and more Mud. So we found nothing. 4 out of the 5 grandchildren 'somehow' got mud all over them and it was a good thing they'd all brought a change of clothes before our pub meal!

The River Deben at Ramsholt

Thank you for all the cheesy comments yesterday - I love the idea from Boud of calling it a Tour De Cheese!

Back Tomorrow

Sue

 

Lackford Lakes + Day 22

 Every March there is a second-hand Book Sale at Lackford Lakes just a little way North-West of Bury St Edmunds. The site is managed by Suffolk Wildlife Trust and is made up of open water areas which were once sand and gravel pits and reed beds.

I've never before been to a book sale here when the sun was shining! But is was a fine morning this time.

Although sunny, the wind was really strong as you can see by the reeds below.

I had a bit of a wander with the camera in the hope of spotting an unusual bird but the only thing that I saw that I wouldn't see at home were .......Canada Geese. I think it was too windy to see anything small, they were all hiding.

When I  went in the cafe for a coffee to get warmed up there were some Reed Buntings hopping about under the  birdfeeders, along with Chaffinch and Blue-tits.

The book sale isn't huge and is mainly non-fiction natural history but the books are always lovely quality and often look as if they've never been read and I came home with these for £5. They all look interesting.

In the shop they had some note cards with illustrations by Angie Lewin whose work I wrote about in the post about The Book of Pebbles . They looked nice but a bit expensive.

Day 22. What do you do if you have just 2 quality sausages to make 2 meals? Answer is to put one in a Yorkshire Pudding to make a Toad in the Hole. Not the silly small ones in the Value Range Asda pack but a proper home made Yorkshire.

It was a thing in my Mum's family during and after the war for the adults in the family  to have a slice of Yorkshire pudding with some gravy before getting their smaller plate of meat and vegetables. A filler to make sure there was enough meat for the younger children. Mum was second oldest of six children and there was no money to spare. She often wondered how her parents managed when all three girls passed their 11 plus exam to go to Grammar School and needed school blazers and all the rest of the uniform.

I seem to have got off the subject! 

So the 22nd Meal was Toad in the Hole. I twisted the sausage in half so it looked like more than 1 and made in the smallest dish I have. It was a good size so no potatoes needed. Carrots and the last of the cabbage again and gravy.

For the Yorkshire mix I used 1 egg (difficult to use less than one) so it needed 50g of flour + milk/water and that left mixture over - which I thinned down and made a  pancake for my tea.

Anyone else watching the short new series of Grace - police drama set in Brighton. Oh my goodness it's slow - the police seem to stand in a row and say nothing for several minutes. There are only 3 in the series - which will be enough.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

First Charity Book Sale of 2023

 The info on line said opening at 9am and I got halfway there and the signs said "Road Closed" - Grrrr! The signed 'Alternative Route' was back the way I'd come but thank goodness I knew the small back roads  heading roughly in the right direction and arrived only a few minutes late and found just a couple of dealers there - luckily they were only buying lots of hardback fiction.

 There were a few interesting looking non-fiction country books and I nabbed these 3 very quickly . 

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Got home and checked my book of books read and hadn't read any but I had a feeling that 'A Book of Silence' might have been borrowed from the library before, and after a bit of searching on here found that it had been borrowed in 2018 and gone back unread because I'd found it "a bit long-winded and dry!" Oh well, it can be tried again now I've got a copy. 

Then I discovered that 'Diary of a Pint-sized Farmer' had been published before under a different title 'A Farmers Diary' which I'd not borrowed as it didn't sound very interesting.  

Thankfully, although  Phyllida Barstow had an earlier book called My Animals and Other Family which I'd read way back in 2009, the library didn't have a copy of this more recent book so I couldn't have borrowed it already.

1 out of 3 then!

Back Tomorrow

Sue

B is for Books

Of course B is for Books - it couldn't really be anything else! 

I could look through all the Car Boot Bargain and Charity Book Sale posts and find out how many books I've picked up this year but I won't! A few have been bought second hand off Amazon but on the whole most of my reading is books borrowed from the library.

Suffolk libraries are so good - we are VERY lucky. With the running of them being handed over to a Community Interest Group a few years ago things could have gone either way, luckily they found enough volunteers to keep small libraries open and the good sense to find ways to save money and keep reservations free. They've also bought every book I've suggested - wonderful service. This Autumn I  asked if they could buy more of the D.E. Stevenson books that Dean Street Press had reprinted and the most recent British Library Crime Classics  and they did.

There's just no way I could afford to buy all the books I read.

Way back in 2015, when we were still at the smallholding and I had a hallway full of bookshelves, I took photos of them all for the blog - HERE  and counted them all there were 1,482.

Then Colin was ill and we moved to the Very Small Bungalow in Ipswich, several went before we moved and the rest stored in boxes for a year under a bed. More books went again on our move to Clay Cottage and then even more were passed onto charity shops or sold when I moved here.

I've not counted how many books I have now..............they come and go more quickly and I don't keep many fiction once they are read - except for my Persephone collection and a few others that I've really enjoyed.

What I do seem to have more of than ever before are Books for Blogging! They seem to have grown in number. There are Folklore books, the Flower Fairy books, the Calendar of Saints, lots of books about trees and flowers and vegetables. If ever I stop blogging there are loads that could go............but not yet.

Somehow I find it very hard not to go to a charity second-hand book sale. What might I miss? perhaps books never come across before, just doesn't bear thinking about!

These are my finds from the most recent second-hand book sale, it was raising money for village hall funds in Westleton and there was a very good amount of books, thank goodness, as it was quite a trip out.

I picked up this little booklet for Jennie at Codlins and Cream blog or Thelma at North Stoke, both like the West Country and both like old things - not sure how I can split it!

And these for me. .............

I've been wanting a bigger and better atlas for a while and with all hardbacks at £1 each it seemed a good opportunity (even though it's a bit out of date) it's got huge maps going into good detail. Paper backs were 50p. Had to get the one at the top of the heap - didn't know there was crime set in Southwold on the Suffolk coast. The next is also crime that I've not come across.

Didn't think I'd read the Barbara Pym - but found I had - annoying, straight out to charity shop

A Millstone Round my Neck is by Norman Thelwell - who used to draw all the little fat ponies. It's about restoring a watermill. Col always fancied living in one.

One of Norman Thelwell's pony cartoons

The Book of Pebbles is one of those books that I'd seen around but have no idea what it's about except it has gorgeous illustrations by an artist and printmaker called Angie Lewin who once lived in Norfolk.

I keep adding books to the bookshelves but will move some out too.

Back Tomorrow

Sue