Well April’s weather is certainly ending the month with a bang, and a steamy hot sizzling one at that. All of sudden we’re experiencing prolonged temperatures in the mid twenties, and while we’ve been lucky enough to have the odd lovely sunny day throughout the month they haven’t been quite as warm as this. Of course though with a bank holiday on the horizon it won’t be long before things are back to normal. It is what it is.
Our family weekends have continued this month. I’ve shared a separate post about the joy the blossom brought after lunch out in West Sussex with MOH’s side of the family. Then the following weekend we hosted a barbecue for my side of the family - and we were lucky with the weather that day too; we’d said a few weeks before that if it looked like it would be nice enough to sit in the garden then to bring garden chairs - and it was, and they did. It was a lovely and relaxed afternoon with all the usual, and a visit to see the lambs too. My great niece, who’s four, was impressed with our house and stated she could live here - she’s so much like her mum it’s scary, though her mum was probably twice that age when she had a similar if not bolder request!
Cute lambs and cats
I’ve had plenty of opportunity to keep my eye on the lambs - and them me - this month as I’ve had a week of cat feeding duties for one of our neighbours, which of course I was more than happy to do. Every time though that I walked past the lamb field they all stopped to look - probably for food - before bleating a bit and going back to whatever they were doing. They really are rather cute.
Feeding the cats was ok too, though one of them did a bit of a disappearing trick from late one evening to late afternoon the following day causing a bit of concern. But she came back - phew, and was unscathed by her big adventure - double phew! Though both of us were happy that she was milking the attention and fussing when she returned, and of course the other one didn’t want to miss out either - but mostly it was a ‘no see just leave the food’ kind of arrangement!
The Barbican and The Workhouse
The month started with a solo trip to London for me, strangely the first where I’ve travelled both ways on my own. I was in London to celebrate a friend’s retirement - and it was great to see everyone - but was there early enough to visit the Citra Sasmita exhibition at the Barbican, and also to stumble across the Moor Lane Community Garden, which was a fascinating place and had plenty of quotes, like this one, hung in the space.
I’m planning to share more about both of these, but they haven’t quite made it here yet - but will do soon, hopefully.
Over Easter with family visiting we headed out to our nearest National Trust property - the Workhouse and Infirmary at Southwell. It was our first visit there and we weren’t quite sure what to expect, but it probably wasn’t what we experienced. It was a really insightful glimpse into life at a workhouse, and there was a lot to take in - it covered the life of those in the workhouse and their daily tasks, but also the history since the workhouse closed, and was brought to life by volunteers in costume.
It really was very well done and incredibly educational - we also discovered that the cellars were lovely and cool, worth noting for future hot spells!
And last weekend we popped along to the Newark Garden Show again - we loved it last year, and so went back again. This time though we left with a few more purchases including a large garden sculpture (wrapped in black plastic in the photo below), which we just about got in the car, and a new large plastic pot which I plan to move the peach tree into at some point. And plants, more plants than last year too!
Lights, wands and customer service
There’s been some other new additions to our home this month too; the replacement light I mentioned at the end of last month’s post turned into a bit of a drama. After receiving the returned item we were told that the replacement wouldn’t be in stock until June at the earliest. June! So I was straight on the phone and email to cancel our order and request a full refund, including the hefty delivery charge - thankfully they agreed to do this pretty easily, but after a week or so no refund had arrived. When I phoned again it seems they were waiting for me to provide my credit card details, but as they hadn’t asked for these or even mentioned it I’m not sure how it was ever going to progress. This is the second thing we’ve attempted to buy from this company (we had delays on the first item too), and it’s the last - we won’t use this company again, ever.
Which is a shame though as I really liked the light - but not enough to be messed around, or to have a substandard lamp - so our search continued, and while it’s not the same a new light was ordered. That has arrived and even though that took longer to arrive than first indicated, it’s a keeper.
I’ve also had a replacement wand for my Shark - and I’m still impressed with it, probably more so as their customer service is fantastic. It’s a shame they don’t sell lights tbh! With family visiting we were cleaning, as you do. We even cleaned the cobwebs off the highest skylight, which involved the garden ladder at it’s full extension and a rigged up cobweb buster boosted with our extended skylight pole. Clearly MOH was up the ladder and I was directing from the ground!
But cleaning at ground level also gave us an issue as the pivot joint on the Shark sheared and so it wouldn’t open to full height. It was still usable but to use it we had to bend double, so it wasn’t ideal. I thought I’d give them a call even though it was a Saturday morning to try to source a replacement, and sure enough they sorted it there and then and the replacement part arrived on the Tuesday. Given my other customer services experiences this month, this was the total other end of the scale and quite frankly all customer service should be like this.
We’ve welcomed new neighbours in the last barn to be completed on our development, and enjoyed their hospitality along with our other close neighbours one evening. A productive evening too it would seem as remember last month I said there was more traffic coming through the village (at speed) following the roadworks, well it seems having a car parked in the main thoroughfare slows things down, though it does at time encourage more beeping, but hey ho!
My sewing group held a stash sale, and while I could have easily hosted a table I didn’t - I went along with a small amount of cash to spend and left with more than I expected, including some fat quarters and some large pieces which I’ll be able to use in future charity quilts, some fabulous vintage Vogue pattern catalogue pages which I’ll share more of later in the week and a random selection of old haberdashery items, including threads ‘for darning all kinds of hosiery etc’ - clearly I won’t be using them for that!
And finally, in house news our main thermostat for our heating system is working again - yay! The issue (which didn’t affect how the heating system worked) was a wiring one, which thankfully was easy for the right engineer to fix. I’m glad it’s sorted though.
We’ve a busy month ahead of us in May, and it could finally be the month where we get at least some more of the garage sorted out - mostly because from the end of next month it’s likely that I’ll be restricting what’s allowed in my very new car, which I test drove and ordered last week. And yes, for those of you that know me in real life - it’s another Renault, I’m nothing if not a creature of habit where my cars are concerned!
If you want to read my previous monthly updates in my ‘This is’ series you’re very welcome.
