Friday 28 November 2014

Two Posts in One Day? Wow

I have just seen {THIS}.  What is going on?

This is completely crazy.  

People be crazy.  

I walked to the park and back.  I have spent nothing today.  

Was I the only one to not part with my cash?

Its Friday!!!!!

You are probably all wonder what happened with the house and the silence on my blog.

Unfortunately, we were out bid again on a house.  

We keep missing out.  We offered 15% over the asking price and still missed the mark.  This was a house with no land other than a medium sized garden. 

What are we going to do now?  Well we will keep looking.  There isnt much out there.  We will keep monitoring all the websites and then hurtle off down country lanes to look at the houses. 

House price are still rising so we need to act fast.  Anything that is in a village or in the sticks seems to be at a premium.  We are finding they are going for north of £550k add on top of that {stamp duty} to be paid to the Government and your getting into an area where it makes me feel a little sick.  

Compromise.  I am not sure what else we can compromise on.  

A change of tactic?  I think we will now look at the edge of towns.  Everyone seems to want the same as us.  30 mins tops from the nearest motorway junction.  Village community.  Driveway parking.  A small shop, a pub and if lucky a post office.  

You see my desire to have a buttery coloured stone house is really messing with our buying power.  

We cant get rid of the time to the motorway, that is top priority.  we have already cut the number of bedrooms to 2, Posh Boy works from home so we need an office area, that he can remote in from when he is on call.

When a house is 2 beds you then lose a dining area.  we have given up on a garage or an out building.  Not to mention any land.  And now we are giving up on village.  It all feels like a compromise to far now.  

I think we will end up with a house, but it wont be anything that we thought it would be.  After 10 months of looking we are now jaded.  Heck we are even looking in the town we are already in.  

It all feels a little out of control, we will keep looking.  The dream continues.

Tuesday 25 November 2014

Whilst we wait...


We had to chip the ice from the car this morning and after that I went back in the house and I have demolished half of my mending basket.  Hooray.  the other half I am not sure is saveable.  I will have to see if some of it can be sorted by my Sister.  What a lovely gift for her before Christmas!  lol Else she can have all the fabric for teaching the Great Nieces to sew or for a quilt.  Obviously sans buttons!  Buttons are always useful.

Its raining again now.

Chilli in the oven for dinner.  A good splash of cinnamon makes all the difference.  yum.

Off to meet my lovely friend who is taking me to lunch to take my mind off it all.  The alarm bells must have been ringing when I said I was doing my mending pile.


Monday 24 November 2014

Fingers crossed please


*edited as I dont know the date today!*

My heart is in my throat, we have made a sealed bid on a house.  We will find out Thursday after 12 noon.  

Fingers crossed from everyone please. 

After months of looking for a forever home we are hoping this might be it.  No land.  But some nearby.  

Lets all hope.

Saturday 22 November 2014

Cheese for your ears? - Allo Allo

 

Holy Heck, the man singing on Strictly Come Dancing just murdered the Macarena.

Seriously that band even made Shirley Bassey sound bad the other week.  

They need sacking.

Horrendous Darling!

 

Friday 21 November 2014

Herschel - Bath

A while ago I was wandering about in Bath and found this place, I knew it was some where abouts here.  look at the lovely colour of the stone.  *sigh*












I love the colour of this front door and the plant pots.




Read more about him {here} and {here}

Thursday 20 November 2014

Wonky Donkey

For Nora





What is that? - not for vegetarians

When in London we always end up in China Town at some point.  We dont eat there, we have a rule if we dont recognise the food we dont eat it!  lol  

I get that the things on the left are ducks but in both the following 2 pictures what the heck is it on the top right that looks like armadillo?






Stuffed squid?  I dont know?

No idea

definitely no, I still dont know what above is


Half a duck and maybe pig ears?  

goose or stuffed duck neck?  
And again I have absolutely no idea what this is either?

Yep we didnt eat here.  We ate at the {Masala Zone} in Covent Garden.  We had the grand vegetarian thali's.  Bloomin lovely.  I recommend the Masala Zone.  I think there are a few dotted around London.

Would you eat the things above?

Wednesday 19 November 2014

Tuppence









I love the statues dotted all over.  As we wandered about I kept mentally singing to myself, "feed the birds, tuppence a bag.  Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag".

Isnt it beautiful

Tuesday 18 November 2014

Giant Leap... I mean Tree

One Giant Leap Tree




The tree is at {Drumlanrig Castle}, in Scotland.

For once I spotted something when I was looking down!  lol

Monday 17 November 2014

Desert Island Discs - Captain Eric Brown





On Friday after I had cleaned up, I flopped down on the bed (after desperately fighting with a super king sized duvet cover), and turned my clock radio on and listened to the people talking.  For the life of me I cant remember what they were saying.  They were over shadowed and completely eclipsed by what I heard next.

At 9am a lilting voiced Scottish lady interviewed Captain Eric Brown for his choices of 'Desert Island Discs'.  Wow.  What a man.  At aged 95 his voice cracked a little as he was talking.  The words that came out in his calm and steady manner, marked him as a true Gentleman.

You can read more about him {here} and {here}

His first flight was with his Father aged around 8, they kept this a secret from his Mother.  His Father was in the RAF.  He saw the Berlin Olympics where he met Ernst Udet a German Pilot, who told him to learn German fluently and learn to fly. 

The reason he joined the Royal Navy instead of the RAF, was because the Navy had suffered great losses of lives at the start of WW2 and were left with very few Pilots.

He was one of only 2 people who survived the U-boat torpedo that sunk HMS Audacity.  24 men joined themselves together with string (he corrected the lady and said, not rope, just string).  He said that the other pilot and himself survived due to wearing Mae West life preservers.  Where the other men had only the normal floatation devices that were like a rubber ring with braces over the shoulders.  As it was December they all suffered hypothermia and as they slipped into a deep sleep they rolled forward and drowned, so they did not drag them all under, they had to cut them loose.  Where as the 2 pilots had Mae Wests, they had inflated headrest and were balanced so you tipped backwards, moving your face away from the water.

He holds the world record 2407 landings on air craft carriers, using and testing 20 different aircraft.  He said that an American tried to beat this record but had to stop his attempts after suffering a nervous break down following his 1600 landing.  I can only imagine what it must be like trying to land on an aircraft carrier that could be up to 100 miles away, you have to search for it, as you couldnt have radio contact for coordinates in case someone was listening.  And that coupled with the rolling of the vessel, wind, bad weather and poor vision it is a feat of amazing skill.  I only have to think about us sailing in rain and high winds to think of how hard that must have been.

{Here} are his choices, his favourite of these being Stardust.  Along with the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare that they make everyone have, his final book would be a book on the Moon Landings.  I didnt catch the title as I was listening so hard to him talking about being friends with Neil Armstrong for over 30 years, I completely missed it.  He also stated he would like his flight logs, to which he added so he 'could relive his whole life'. 

He last flew a plane at the age of 70 in 1989, saying that he could only akin the feeling of giving up flying to a person going through drug withdrawal.  For a year he was hell to live with. 

He still gives talks and lectures now, I would love to hear him in real life...

Wow, is all I can say.



Friday 14 November 2014

Its Friday!

 

Its nearly the weekend so that must mean house hunting for us.  More winding back roads... deep joy.

Hope you are all going to have a great weekend.

Saw {this} on Molly Printemps Blog, Carol posted it and it made me a little leaky of the eyes.  Go see.

Thursday 13 November 2014

To the Time Machine...

On my wanders in London (as with most of my life), I tend to be looking up a lot of the time.  

Whilst hustling along to get to the Sherlock Holmes Museum, I happened on this...  How cool is that?


 It was also on Baker Street. 

All those fabulous books by {H G Wells} ... my favourite?  The Time Machine, of course.  When I read The invisible Man and the War of the Worlds (my Father had the latter on record, I can see the cover in my head right now), they both scared the heck out of me


Wednesday 12 November 2014

221b


221b Baker Street, London.




 

Apparently when the book was written the highest numbered building was number 85.  Below is number 85.  (I thought that was interesting)


I love these tiles in the Tube station.  to give you scale there is a bench in the picture below.


Another bit of trivia, when the museum opened they had a bit of argy bargy with the Abbey Bank down the road as to who got the post for Sherlock Holmes.  The bank actually employed someone to reply to all the letters where people didnt realise that Sherlock wasnt a real person.  The letter now go to the museum.

Tuesday 11 November 2014

Armistice Day

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Monday 10 November 2014

Imperial War Museum #3



This  was one of my favourite exhibits.



















Blogger is being weird and has added some of the pictures twice.  Sorry I cant seem to delete them or get them in order.  It has even rotated one?