Memories ... and Blog Posts

 

Isn't it nice when you are sorting through things, to find something that you haven't seen for ages that brings back happy memories. Clearing the decks ready for the photos of the house and annexe meant that I was going through some of my box files in a bid to make a bit of space in my few cupboards ... and I came across these two photos.

The top one is us not long after we got married taken outside my tiny little shop in Ulverston, Cumbria.  It would have been sometime early 2008, probably when I was just setting things up as I was still working for the Hospice when we got married in December 2007.  Yes, my neighbour was the Laurel and Hardy Museum when it was in it's old location, and next to them on the corner was The Chippy Bank, the best chip shop in Ulverston.

Don't ask me how many times I had a 'chip barm' for my dinner while I had the shop.  😁

 

Luckily this photo is clearly dated, or I wouldn't have had a clue.  

My Dad with the rest of his class in 1938.  He would have been seven years old then as his birthday was right at the end of the year ... he was born in 1930 ... so I don't know how their class numbering system worked.  It obviously had changed by the time I went to the same school in 1965 as I was in Class I at five.  I'm guessing it's something to do with school leaving ages, Dad left school at 14 and I left at 16.

Mum must have had trouble recognising him on the photo as she wrote his name under him.  💖

I'm getting really annoyed with Blogger again at the moment.  

Instead of updating the blogs in my sidebar, and on lots of other people's sidebars, and showing the title of the newest post that I, or they have written, it seems to be lagging far, far behind.  I am trying to get into the habit of clicking on the blog title and not the 'latest post', which is now frequently found not to be the latest post at all.  I am having to do a numerous day catch up every now and then as I just hadn't realised they had published a newer post.

Don't mess with my coffee or my blog reading.  😠

Sue xx

Connie Onnie Butties ... and Other Memories

 

My brother, my Dad and me, around 1971 or 72

It's hard to date some photos isn't it, I tend to look at what I'm wearing, how old my brother looks as he's four years younger than me and then where we are.  This was taken at Pontins, the Middleton Towers camp I think, we only ever went to two of their camps, but this was my parents favourite one.

I went down a rabbit hole of thinking about the past yesterday after watching the YouTube channel British Nostalgia while I ate my breakfast.  They are good videos if you can get over the AI voiceover that occasionally gets his words wrong and puts emphasis in the wrong places, and if you just laugh at the photos not always matching the commentary.

This is the video that I watched.

https://youtu.be/bKSB3X1kXWU?si=rwyhxygZ_By1xL9c

It was very true of a lot of the meals we ate back in the 60s and 70s in Manchester, England.

It's funny, as children we never thought of ourselves as poor, although we lived in just three rooms.  They were the downstairs rooms of my Nana's house.  We shared the bathroom that was upstairs and had to be quiet so as not to disturb her whenever we used it, but I never minded that. When I was thirteen in 1973 we got a brand new council house and moved out ... much to my Mum's relief.

We ate simply and cheaply, and I could cope with most foods, although even then I hated meat.  But I was forced to eat it, we always had to clear our plates ... 'or the starving children in Africa would be upset'.  Even as a child I thought that Mum's statement was ridiculous.  Mum was not a good cook, which was slightly ironic as she was a school dinner lady!  We ate the most basic foods, overcooked to within an inch of their lives, hence my hatred of Brussels sprouts to this day ... and my brother's pea phobia .

So watching this YouTube video brought back a lot of memories, good ones and bad ones ... liver and onions when overcooked would be useful for a cobbler, he would be able to resole leather shoes with the liver glued on with the gloopy onions.  Well my Mum's version anyway. 😖

But one thing we never had, but my ex-husband did, was Connie Onnie butties, or sandwiches if you from the posh end of the street. 

 It was simply condensed milk spread on white bread and topped with another slice, and eaten over a plate or at the very least away from your clothes as they dripped.  My ex also regularly lived on 'sugar butties' as a child, just as it sounds they were simply buttered white bread with a spoonful of sugar sprinkled over the butter, then the two slices pressed together, usually taken outside to be eaten while you played or just sat on the front doorstep.  No wonder he had so many missing teeth even when we first met!  My cheap sandwich of choice was a salad cream butty, just that bread and salad cream, they were very tasty, but Mum didn't really approve.

Of course it was the days of corner shops and very small 'supermarkets' when they first arrived.  Our local corner shop had illusions of grandeur when it purchased two shopping trollies.  With only two narrow aisles and the meat and cheese counter at the end of the shop, if someone had a trolley in use anyone else shopping with the more usual wire basket, had to follow the trolley pusher around until they finally reached the till, or else try and squeeze past if the person stopped at the meat counter.  Luckily I think we were a lot more patient back in the day. 😄

What 'poor food' did you have as a child, or were you 'proper posh'?

Sue xx

Memories of Easters Gone

So many memories tied up in photographs.

Every Easter when we were children we would go round to visit my Gran.  She was my Mum's Mum, and gosh I loved her to bits.  Mum criticised her all the time to my Dad in the hearing of me and my brother and I never understood it or thought it fair even as a child.  Now as an adult a lot of the things that she said and did still seem so unfair, especially considering that my Mum is so like her in so many ways.

We are stood outside her large four story rented house in this photo, she was relocated there after the family home was totally flattened by a bombing raid during World War 2, and she stayed there until she was rehoused in the early 1970's.  As a child I loved the old house, but found parts of it very spooky as it was very gloomy in all but the front 'best' room, hence the photo being taken outside on the street.

It was about a forty minute walk to get to Gran's house, but back in the day we were all used to walking much longer distances weren't we and it just seemed normal.  Gran would walk round to ours most Saturdays as she loved to watch the wrestling on the television, she refused to have a tv in her house until her dying day, she thought that they would burst into flames willy nilly.

I have to say none of mine ever have.  😁

 We didn't have to travel any where near as far to visit my Nana, Dad's Mum.  We lived downstairs in her house.  So we would get our new Easter clothes on and troop upstairs to receive an Easter egg and have our photo taken.  I loved my Nana, just as much if not more, although sitting and posing for a photo with her seemed strange.

I would go upstairs and watch television with Nana most nights, our favourite evenings together were Mondays, when it would be at least one quiz show, usually University Challenge ... Nana did like Bamber Gascoigne ... and then Opportunity Knocks.  A highlight of watching tv upstairs was that I got to sit on a chair, downstairs we only had two armchairs so me and my brother would sit cross legged on the floor when we watched anything.

It's funny, but oh so nice, how two photos can bring so many memories flooding back.

Wishing a very Happy Easter to all my readers, wherever you are and whatever you are doing.  Perhaps you are making memories for the future, or simply reliving lovely ones from the past.  Both are wonderful things to do.

Sue xx

Granny Would Be Proud

 

All today's photos are from Google Images

I've watched some really interesting YouTube videos over the last few days, slotted in here and there between shopping, visiting and visits to us.  Sometimes I choose YouTube in preference to watching a pre-recorded television programme because I can pick and choose and slot in viewing in the space it takes me to eat lunch or have a cup of coffee.  I can also watch it in preference to the news, as once I have heard the headlines I feel a real urge to take a step back.  After all there's nothing I can do except live my life calmly, quietly and as peacefully as possible.

https://youtu.be/2dmJVyRR4Mo?si=lCCb53A-WpPpETvz

28 minutes long

Just recently I have been watching a few tips and money saving channels and really retro ideas that actually make sense for now.  One that I came across on Saturday was this one. Try and ignore the annoying AI voice, but enjoy the photos that don't quite match up with the words, I found some of them made me laugh, so it was entertaining in every sense of the word.

Wouldn't a step back to a lot of the old ways be a welcome relief at the moment, well I think so ... but then I am a Granny.  😄

My washing goes out on the line in all but the worst of the weather, I shop predominately with cash, I don't buy what I don't need and I repair what I already have.  I reuse, recycle and re-invent before I throw most things away.  Oh, I make mistakes sometimes, but then don't we all.  But doing our best in difficult times can only be a good thing.

https://youtu.be/Y3Rg-UJ39pU?si=oXNdHGKyPI8CcGCU

Under 9 minutes long.

This more food based one is charmingly retro, and very on point with todays escalating food prices.  It's also American so I loved the completely different foods that it shows.  I do like the idea of 'biscuits and gravy' still popular I believe in the USA today, but for me in the UK that always brings to mind a dish of custard cream biscuits smothered in Bisto.  😐

This mornings little 'reset' was lightly stewing up six little apples that had lived in the fridge for far too long.  One portion for breakfast with a Weetabix and three more in the fridge for later in the week.  Nothing wasted, everything being used up in a good way ... granny would have been proud.

Sue xx

Logs ... Past and Future

 

It's funny what pops up in your Facebook Memories.  The other day this photo appeared and the one below, it made me go back and read the blog post that they were originally on.

It's HERE if you're interested.

I read a few of the other posts around it, and I had to laugh because only a couple of days earlier I had been saying how good I was getting at chopping wood with an axe!!

A post all about logs and kindling ... which seems very apt at the moment as we hope to be able to have a log burner in our new bungalow.  Although we won't have a barn to store all the logs and kindling in, so we will have to be a lot neater.

We are going to be all electric with solar panels, so with the rise of power cuts over the last few years we think it might be a bit prudent to have an alternative heat source as well ... and of course a log burner is lovely to sit in front of and to look at on a cold Winter's night.

I might not be writing so romantically about it once I have to actually chop wood, or even just keep getting up and down to put another log on the fire.  😄

Sue xx

Too Many Notebooks ... and Old Challenges

 

I was sorting through my stationery drawers the other day, and NO in great big letters I do not need any more notebooks of any description until I reach at least 100 years of age.  Nor do I need any pens or pencils if all the ones in the drawer are in good working order.

Anyway one notebook really caught my attention, it was full of loose bits of paper alongside many, many filled pages.  It turned out to be the one I kept while I was doing a number of my Challenges on my other blog.  

Eat for £25 a week, eat for one pound a day, two pounds a day etc etc.  But the most interesting challenge was the Eat for £3.50 a Week Challenge, that I actually only did back in April of 2023.  I ended up dropping everything else that I was doing and reading through all of my notes.

Sorry that the photos are so blurry, but I'm sure that you get the gist of it.

It really got me wondering if that would be possible right now.  I honestly think not, but I think I will go onto the Sainsbury's website and see how the prices compare with this months prices.

Now while the paper exercise of the challenge looked very promising, with lots of food being able to be bought for the budget, the actual Challenge itself panned out more like this.

The Eat for £3.50 a Week Challenge

Sue xx

Paintings ... and Tattoos

 

I was asked for a closer look at the picture that was seen in the third photo of THIS post.  Here it is for your delight and delectation. It's a print of an original by Judy Boyes that I bought just before I met Alan.  

It's called My Old Fireplace.

I had been going out with another guy, and on one of our first dates he bought himself something very similar by the same artist for his old cottage in Cumbria.  I loved that it had the two cats pictured in it that I had at the time ... Pepper and Ginger (my Ginger, not the current Ginger who came to us already named as a foster cat).

We parted company not long after, and I thought sod him and his mean ways, and I travelled back to the original shop up in the Lakes and bought myself this one.  I tend to do this after a failed relationship, I have a tattoo on my arm of a gecko, he's called Freddie Freedom and he came to live on me after my divorce was finalised.

The picture is almost as permanent and has travelled with me through many addresses.  And of course this can be passed on to one of my sons, whereas a slice of my skin can't!!  😁

Yes I have a strange sense of humour ... but then you knew that didn't you.  😉

Sue xx

Books and Signatures

 

I took a break from reading my other books to go right through this one last week.  It was good to refresh my mind on  things to do with leftovers.  Of course it's right back on my shelf where it's nicely to hand for any last minute dithers over using up bits and bobs.

It was only when I finished reading it that I noticed Suzy's signature inside.  Of course I knew it was signed when she sent it to me, but in the intervening years I had forgotten.

It made me pull out a few of my other books that are signed for a quick look.

Suzy's book, one of Ella Woodward's ... all my copies of her books are signed ... and the most recent acquisition on my cookbook shelves is the latest one by Gaz Oakley, also signed.

There's something nice about having a link to the author of a book, well for me there is anyway.

The covers of the books above.

We used to have all of the River Cottage books, all signed by the authors, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, Mark Diacono, Pam (the Jam) Corbin and John Wright, all signed when we visited Park Farm for various events when we had our farm and smallholdings.  

Our very first signature off Hugh was in the diary we purchased from Park Farm as it was known then, right at the beginning of our self sufficiency journey, it was the quickest of signatures but the longest of chats as Hugh and Alan got on really well. 

I have to say that when we sold most of our River Cottage books via Amazon we managed to get a much better price for them because of the signatures.  😃

One final book that I remembered while I was having a little look through the book shelves was one of my Harcombe Diet books, again they are all signed, but this one has contributions from me in it and I got a thank you off Zoe.

I thought this was a nice touch.

 I do have some more signed copies of books, but my books in general seem to be here there and everywhere at the moment. I really need to get them organised and maybe ... shock, horror ... have a bit of a cull.

Sue xx

A Blast from the Past

 

I was searching for an image of a coin purse to use as an illustration on yesterdays blog post, but the only ones I could find online that I liked were copyrighted.  So, I went back in time on my old blog and found an image of my old purse to use instead.

Dangerous stuff, it sent me down a rabbit hole of blog posts from various years, where cash was indeed king as we shopped with limited budgets gleaned from our various sealed pots..

This one was particularly interesting, it's from the era when we all used to share things to get to know each other better.  It suited the times but I'm not so sure we would really do that sort of thing now ... or would we?

 But, I decided I would be brave again and share it with you.

Exposed in Every Way

Sue xx

Inspiration ... Three Slices of Egg

 

Yesterday's breakfast on the left, and part of todays lunch on the right.

Saving little bits from one meal as the basis of another has always been something that I like to do, a spoonful of this or that can be the inspiration behind a whole other meal.  I think I really got into this a few years ago when I used to read Suzy's blog Sudden Lunches every day and she would make the most amazing meals which started off from the remnants or purposefully picked out bits of others.

I posted here about her book when it first came out.

The Leftovers Handbook by Suzy Bowler

I think I am going to have another read through of this to give me even more inspiration.

But in the meantime, I have a couple of spring onions in the garden, and a sad looking remnant of a lettuce and lots of lovely homegrown tomatoes in the fridge, so I see a lovely egg salad bun on my very close horizon.  😁

Edited to add in:

My egg salad bun.  😀

Sue xx

A Piggy Past

 

All this week my Facebook Memories has been throwing up images of our rare breed pigs and news of their new homes, as this was the month in 2011 when we suddenly had to rehome our gorgeous girls, their babies ... and Jack the boar ... as sadly we were having to travel backwards and forwards to Scotland as Alan's Mum was in the last few months of her life.  We needed to be able to leave our farm at the drop of a hat.  It all went so smoothly looking back but it was a hectic time of our lives for sure.

Here's a real blast from the past, a full post from my old blog Our New Life in the Country. 

Friday, 8 July 2011

The Large Blacks in their New Home

Don't you just love it when......you know you've done the right thing.

We've known Lulu and Lottie since they were two weeks old, they came to live with us when they were seven weeks old.  Liz and Jack both came to us when they were four months old.  So they've known us and we've known them almost all their lives.

We felt like parents sending their children away when they left the farm this week.  They trusted us and we felt we'd let them down.  Then we get a phone call to say that Lulu has settled in well after we delivered her to Jimmy's Farm last week, and has made her home ready for her babies to be born.  Then yesterday we get an email with the picture at the top of this post, along with others showing more of Jack, Lottie and Liz's new home, grassy pastures surrounded by woodlands.

The lovely folk that picked them up from our farm took loads of pictures in the orchard, documenting the loading at our end and the fun and games we had in trying to move a 30st boar in a direction he's not keen on going in.  Luckily Lovely Hubby is a strong man and Jack is a friendly boar.  Henk and Annemie who are the new owners, were amazed at Jacks lovely temperament, and that he walked into the trailer and let them close the dividing door ready for the loading of his wives.

Now we feel we can take a deep breath, like parents who have raised their children well and sent them off into the big bad world with the knowledge to live their lives well, we feel in a small way we have done the same for our pigs. 

Jack, Lottie, Liz, and later Lulu and her litter when she joins them, are forming the start of a breeding herd of Large Black pigs in the Netherlands, supplying rare breed quality pork and keeping their rare bloodlines going.  Animals reared the natural way.  Henk has had to work miracles to get permission to do this, animals are not permitted to be kept outdoors in the Netherlands, something I knew nothing about.  He is breaking new ground and bringing a better quality of life to farm animals and educating people on what their meat should taste like through his restaurant.

We are so happy to be a part of this.

Sue xx

 Gosh it really shows how different things were in our lives back then.  Hope you all have a good weekend.

Sue xx

To view this post easier on a mobile, scroll to the bottom and click on 'View Web Version', it makes it much easier to read as my old and latest blogs are done in a slightly different formats to each other.

Thanks Angela ...

 

Angela from Tracing Rainbows gave me a real earworm yesterday ... all day.  

Her post was about granola and she very cleverly called it 'Her Name Was Lola ... She Ate Granola'.  The tune was stuck in my head, the only way I could get rid of it was with the old Postman Pat trick, but Lola came back again and again. 😐

The reason that most of Barry's songs turn into an earworm for me goes back to the mid eighties, when he was really popular with my ex-husband.  I made the mistake of buying him the double album on cassette tape for Christmas ... it was the only cassette tape we owned and our little orange Mini car had a cassette player in it.

From then on every single journey we went on, local or long-distance, had a Barry Manilow soundtrack, and we travelled to Manchester every week from Barrow in Furness.  We must have had the only five year old that knew the words to all of Barry Manilow's songs off by heart.  Simon would sit in his little car seat in the centre of the back seat of the Mini belting out the songs as loud as his little lungs would let him.  If it got too much I would tell him to sing very quietly and we could see his lips moving via the rear view mirror.

Happy memories in so many ways, except for the earworm that I have now given myself!!

https://youtu.be/Yj1r0sGV38s?si=saGu2xVpXfVFJnK_

Sue xx

Us Bloggers Did It First

 

Instagram verses Facebook verses YouTube verses blogging.  

I guess it's all a sign of the times.

 I know my youngest grandson wouldn't touch Facebook with a bargepole and to my knowledge he doesn't have an Instagram account.  He is a gamer and used to be on YouTube, but I don't know if he still is or whether he is now on some other platform.  My older grandson shares the occasional thing on Facebook and chats with me via Messenger, and my eldest grandson advertises his removals business with a Facebook business account, free advertising is never to be sniffed at when you are running what started off as a small company.

Quite a few bloggers have made the leap to YouTube and are being pretty successful in their new 'careers'.  I only ever used YouTube as a vehicle to be able to download little films off my phone or camera onto blog posts.  I have never felt the urge to be a YouTuber and can't see myself ever doing it.

I have quite enjoyed my dalliance with Instagram, and have been astounded at the viewing figures on my little reels, posts and stories ... I still get confused about which is which. 😕 

But looking at my professional Instagram dashboard, I have had over 13,000 views in a little over a month ... that is crazy!!  It is also a little bit alarming to think that all those people have been looking at my posts, and the question is of course do I even want so many strangers looking at my films, pictures and ideas?  

As you can imagine I am having a really big think about this one.

I think my forte and my heart will always be in blogging.  

I love the written word, it's tangible, it stays where you put it, and bar a little mis-translation occasionally is exactly what it says it is.  Us Bloggers were also at the forefront of the whole 'Influencer' and online advertising thing.  I remember myself and a few blogging buddies being asked to choose three tea towels each from a lovely small company and do a review of them.  These were actually brilliant by the way and lasted me for years.  Most of what I agreed to review turned out to be really good.  I was very picky and choosy and rarely said yes to an out of the blue offer ... although we did once jump at the chance to get an anniversary meal completely free of charge by agreeing to review a pub chains new menu.

One of the stranger offers was for me to make something with British Onions, and to be able to do that I was sent a goody box of various condiments along with a couple of pounds of onions.  I can't remember what I made but I know that the jar of Marmite sat in my cupboard for years afterwards as neither of us are Marmite lovers.

One of my favourite gifts was rather strangely from Argos.

 They asked me to choose something from their new gardening range to review.  I didn't know what to pick so I settled on giving them a list of three things, and asking for any one of them.  They obviously were expecting bloggers to choose much more expensive items because they sent me all three.

You can read all about it HERE.

These days YouTubers and Influencers, as vloggers are now usually called, get all the freebies and manage to advertise millions of pounds worth of goods for the manufacturers, some of which are downright ridiculous and a waste of a 'normal persons' money.  This has no doubt turned into such big business as less young people watch television and therefore the advertisements, and the advertisers have all had to find new platforms for their wares.

But always remember us bloggers did it first.  😁

Sue xx

A Backstage Tour

 

A cosy book corner. 💖

Sue xx

It is easy to regret ...

From the book The Midnight Library, now this sounds like a very good read.  I'll be on the look out for it for sure.

Isn't this just so true, the people that live with regret become bitter about lost opportunities.  So while you can, say yes to everything that you can say yes to too ... and a few things that perhaps you shouldn't say yes to ... just for good measure.

Art - Esther Bennink

Keep taking time for yourself, until you're you again.  💖

Sue xx

A Childhood Easter

from Google Images

Happy Easter to you all, however you celebrate it.  

Whether it be with a lovely visit to church, an abundance of chocolate eggs or just a lovely quiet family time.  Or maybe it will simply be a day alone doing all of your favourite things. 

I always feel that there is something calming and nostalgic about knowing that virtually all the shops in the country are closed, and we have almost taken a step back to when Sunday was always a relaxing and catch-up family day.  

A day to breathe before the week ahead. 

I thought I would share a few of my childhood Easter photos today.

The day always started with getting dressed in our best clothes, I would go to church with my Nana and then come home to spend some time cuddling our very own Easter bunny ... and his little friend our guinea pig.

Then it was upstairs to Nana's living room to have our photo taken, and receive a chocolate egg each from her.

The we would begin the forty minute walk to Gran's house in the Moss Side area of Manchester, to have another photo taken and be rewarded with another chocolate egg.  

I loved Gran's big old Victorian house, she had lived there since they had been moved into it by the local authority when her first marital home had been completely flattened during the war.  It was so large that to make ends meet and be able to afford the rent she rented out a few of the upstairs rooms.  I dreaded bumping into one of the lodgers if I had to go upstairs to use the shared bathroom.

Some years my Uncle Norman would come and pick us up in his car and we would have a family day out, first to his house for a drink and then onto Lyme  Park which was quite close by.  We got on great with our cousins and were all very similar in age.  We always had to pose for a photo, then it was usually a picnic lunch sat on the grass.

Another year, this time posing in the garden before we set off for Gran's house.  It looks like I got a very posh egg with chocolates that year.  😀

The eggs of my childhood ... 5/3d  gosh they were expensive, no wonder we only ever got three or four.

I was always thrilled when I got a box of these.  

However you celebrate, I hope you enjoy your day and I hope you enjoyed my little trip down memory lane.

Sue xx