Waddya mean those aren’t horses?

I used to be quite good at picking the winners in horse racing. My links to horses and racing go waaaay back to when I used to ride along with them, they being on the TV and me being on my rocking horse. I rode real horses from the age of 7 until teenager-dom made it a bit uncool. Then later, at my first job, I would watch the racing while waiting for the backups to finish on Saturday afternoon, deftly (and almost always correctly) marking the winners in whatever tabloid I found had been left behind in the office. I never put money on the races (betting shops were very much the preserve of grubby, tobacco stained giffers in dirty macs as far as I was concerned), the uncomfortable exception being when I braved the seediness to put a small bet on the Grand National…oh, and a trip to the racecourse. Of course, I never won if there was money at stake. Perhaps the money aspect clouded matters so that I just didn’t trust my instincts or perhaps I’m just not lucky that way. That said, I am pleased to report that I have definitely backed one winner: today is the 21st anniversary of DH and I getting together and it’s out 19th wedding anniversary next week

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I have just returned from a weekend trading at the St George’s event at Wrest Park and I couldn’t have wished for a better start to the season. Wellies were left at home and there was this wonderful, shiny, golden ball thingy glowing hotly in the sky all weekend. I’m not sure what it was, (I certainly didn’t see such a thing last season), but I liked it a lot! It was mostly particularly welcome to thaw out from the overnight temperatures, which were minus lots. See the silver grass? That’s frost –>

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It was with a mixture of excitement and trepidation that we set off to spend the coldest, snowiest Easter week for years in the Alps North Wales.

You can see my confusion…

Llanberis pass

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As another Costume day at school dawns, you find me frantically putting finishing touches to the outfit and dressing the Tudor girl. Costume day has sometimes been a royal pain in the proverbial (particularly back in the days when you were only given about a week’s notice to frantically knock out a suitable period outfit), but on this occasion (and despite being very busy) I’ve loved it. Tudor is one of my favourite clothing periods (along with Medieval and Victorian) as it has such a variety of sumptuous loveliness and lots of interesting underpinnings and accessories. DD and I had lots of fun making and stuffing the bum roll and selecting pearls, trims and fabrics for the outfit. Sadly, I didn’t have time to make her a penner for her quill and ink, but we managed the rest of the outfit just about in time.

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I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. It seems rather bizarre to me to suppose that my will and determination would be significantly stronger on any given date over any other. Neither do I see the point in waiting until the New Year to begin something – if one has already decided to do it, why wait?

The closest I came to a New Year resolution was to have a dry January, for economic and detox reasons to recover slightly from the excesses of the Christmas holidays. I admit I have fallen off the wagon to the tune of two pints thus far, (I made it six days, including New Year’s Day) I will not go in to the reasons, but I’m fine with them and still broadly sticking to the alcohol-free plan, despite continuing to be sorely tried by ongoing and, as yet, unresolved plumbing issues.

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I was at my school reunion at the weekend. It was…well, hard to describe unless you were there, in which case, you won’t need my inadequate attempts to explain the gamut of emotions. If, as is more likely, you weren’t there, I hope this may give you an inkling: it was amazing and comfortable, funny and sad, euphoric and exhausting, novel and familiar…I could go on with the contrasts, but I’m sure you get the idea.

Meh! you might think, it was just a bunch of people you probably lost touch with for a reason and won’t want to see again, but you’d be wrong. When we were there, it was a convent and private boarding school*. (Yes, that’s right, I’m a convent girl and I’m not a nun, make of that what you will).

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The weather this summer has, for the most part, been beyond a joke, even by this country’s motley standard. Three of my events this season have been cancelled due to heavy rain making the site a bog/river/lake.  Night time rain has traumatised myself and other survivors of Kelmarsh into lying fretfully awake in our tents, fearful of waking up to similar scenes of flooding.

We made it to Herstmonceux on the Bank Holiday Friday in good time and had the tent up and the trailer emptied before the rain started (to fill it up). We watched with growing trepidation as the ground assumed sponge-like qualities: water visibly squelching up as you trod down, and this was inside the tent. As it turned out, the rain did not linger and although it was most definitely welly weather on Saturday, the ground dried out nicely and Sunday was glorious, ending with a breathtaking view of the very starry, starry sky.*  Of course, just as we were packing up on Monday evening, it started to rain again, against all probability and just to be annoying. Naturally, now that I am not camping out and have started to write about the rain, we have wall-to-wall sunshine. It’s enough to make an atheist wonder if there is a god, who not only plays dice but loses heavily.

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So, here we are again, with Mercury causing trouble. The planet going Retrograde is being blamed for all kinds of breakdowns and communications, meanwhile, our thermometers have been rising too with a small heatwave last week. It makes a change from floods, I suppose, at least if you don’t count the personal ones I have been experiencing in my own little sweatshop (or the conservatory and my workroom, as it is known.) Either way, it is exploding head time.

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No, really, this is not a badly drawn butterfly, it’s real.

Found this little fellow in the garden yesterday, well, at least two of them actually. When they are in flight, all you see is a flash of shocking pink. I’ve never seen anything like it before and I’m almost certain it’s Life imitating Art, in this case, a child’s painting of a butterfly. The grey is precisely the shade that the white paint goes in a child’s paintbox after repeatedly being used with a none-too-clean paintbrush, and the pink has clearly been daubed on with a highlighter pen after all else has failed.

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It’s no good. I’ve searched and pored over the small print on the tin, but nowhere can I find a disclaimer regarding the colour of this Ronseal Fence Life that they have entertainingly labelled “Medium Oak”. I have taken the colour swatch from their website for your amusement –>

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