This May...

Oh dear, I ended last month’s post wondering if this would be the month we started to sort out the garage. In short, it wasn’t! I clearly had good intentions, but then completely forgot about it, so that’s another job that is still on the list for this month.

In other ways though it’s been a busy month. I was back down in London at the start of the month for the press preview of the new Unearthed exhibition at the British Library, and really enjoyed my mooch around the exhibition and the British Library, which I hadn’t visited before despite living in London for most of my life…

MOH joined me later in the day and we had a wander around the British Museum which was very busy, and then headed over to our hotel in Docklands ready for a day at Grand Designs Live the next day. Although we hadn’t really thought this through and booked a restaurant - the German Gymnasium in Kings Cross for dinner. Thankfully though the Elizabeth line made it super easy to get across town, and back again.

INSIDE THE GERMAN GYMNASIUM AT KINGS CROSS

The decor and history of the restaurant was amazing, and it was a popular place. The food was good, but it’s not somewhere I’d rush back to. The reviews online were mixed and I can see why, but it’s somewhere that I’ve wanted to go for a while, so it was good to experience it for myself. The toilets were pretty unusual too, so at some point I’m sure I’ll share some of their decor.

The building was an actual old gymnasium, and a German one at that. It was built by the German Gymnastics Society in 1865 and was home to London’s first indoor Olympic Games in 1866—and then again in 1908, there’s still some hooks used for the equipment in the Grade II listed building’s roof trusses.

We’ve been further afield too, heading to Devon for a few days to visit family and for a day out at the Devon County Show - our first ever any kind of county show. We had a good day there, again in brilliant sunshine, and it is always good to catch up with family. We stopped off at Croome National Trust on the way down and then on the way back again, so I expect I’ll share more of our visit there, as it’s a beautiful place.

Sport and sorts

There’s been cycling extravaganzas for MOH too; he ventured to Stevenage by train with his bike to meet up with friends for a day’s cycling, and then completed one of his mad 100 mile cycling challenges a few days later. The latter in brilliant sunshine and high temperatures, rather him than me.

For me yoga and zumba in the next village have been few and far between, what with bank holidays coinciding with yoga and in the case of zumba, the hall being used for the local elections as well as a clash with a night out in Newark wine tasting and our few days in Devon. But there has been plenty of home yoga and some home zumba sessions. Home yoga was more successful as I easily dipped back into Yoga with Adriene; for zumba I searched and tried several workouts on YouTube to find one where I didn’t stumble over my feet quite so much - the jury’s still out!

But the big sports news for this long-term Crystal Palace supporter is the FA Cup win. It was a nerve wracking match to watch, but they held onto their 1-0 lead and triumphed over Manchester City. For the occasion I’d opted for some of Brewdog’s Wingman to calm my nerves, mostly because the can was yellow with a blue eagle on!

So clearly I’m claiming some of the success for Palace’s first major trophy win. The beer I drank and for the lucky rub I gave my age-old supporter badge, which I have no idea how or when it arrived with me, clearly made all the difference!

Specs and spectators

My regular eye test and contact lens check was due this month, and while all is good the optician confirmed what I knew already, that my current glasses are now further away from my actual prescription and could do with an update. So I’ve chosen, and recently collected new glasses, which I’ll mostly wear about the house and which will come with me on trips in case of emergencies. And I’ll know that if they’re needed then they’re up-to-date enough to cope with the job!

We’ve been to the theatre in Nottingham again, this time to see Henning Wehn, the german comedian and in the smaller Theatre Royal. It was a good evening with plenty of chuckles along the way, which is always good. I still can’t quite get my head around being home usually within 30 minutes or so of stepping out of the theatre.

At the moment we’ve only got one further theatre trip booked, and that’s not until October when we see Divine Comedy - maybe I should do something about that and see what else is on.

My favourite month

May, I think is my favourite month, though I’m probably biased as it’s my birth month. Though it seems that all of a sudden everything has taken off, we’re much busier than we have been, the weather has generally been good, the garden is growing (and growing) and we’ve been out here, there and everywhere.

I’ve picked up my new car (it’s a newer version of the car I already had and it’s fabulous), the large pot we bought at Grand Designs has been delivered - so now I need to find the right sized and right priced olive tree to put in it - and we’ve got our travel bug back. So much so that I’ve been looking through our holiday photos from last year, and even plan to share some of those walks - you can’t rush things, clearly!

But it also seems crazy that with June around the corner we’re close to half way through the year, how did that happen?!

If you want to read my previous monthly updates in my ‘This is’ series you’re very welcome.

This April...

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.

This March...

March has definitely brought with it hints, and sometimes real glimpses, of spring, including for me some random bulb discoveries around my garden. I found three pale daffodils growing up through the wallflowers, and have enjoyed watching them and the other daffodils flower. Then last week, during my first gardening stint of the year, I noticed a bluebell growing in my pot of rhubarb. It’s entirely possible that this one has long been there, and just hasn’t flowered before - though it looks a little different to the bluebells we had in our London garden.

Either way though, the random bulbs have made me smile. In fact I’ve decided I need more spring bulbs, so will attempt to remember this in the autumn when the daffodil bulbs go on sale - and I may also remember to plant them in time too, if I’m lucky.

The garden’s waking up and much more traffic

In a matter of days the small crab apple tree has gone from twigs to almost having leaves, and I know how it feels as my own wardrobe has changed, well mostly. I’ve definitely worn my jeans less especially towards the end of the month, and I’ve reminded myself I have a whole wardrobe of clothes at my fingertips to wear, rather than just look at.

March has also been a momentous month in that MOH and I made it along to our first village Parish Council meeting, which actually takes place in the next village as we don’t have a village hall, or a pub for that matter. I’m not sure why it’s taken us quite so long to make it along, and we were warmly welcomed to the just over an hour meeting.

A lot of the meeting was taken up by discussing the recently started roadworks on the nearby A46 which are scheduled to last for eighteen months, and have brought increased traffic at more often than not above the 30mph speed limit. The councillors were sympathetic and clearly frustrated as villagers (ours and other small villages) by the increased ‘rat-running’ and have organised additional speed limit reminder signs, as they promised. Of course, they’ve not really made a difference and my view is because the signs are designed to be read by pedestrians, but are really aimed at motorists driving past above the speed limit, so they’re as good as useless as there’s too much information for drivers (or any speed) to read. But at least it’s the first step that needs to be taken in the slow turning wheels of district and county council processes.

Wine, lights and art

Around the house we’ve sorted out some more effective wine storage with a new 42 space wine rack which matches a smaller one we have, and means we have plenty of space and can get rid of various cardboard boxes MOH has been storing under the stairs. It may or may not be our longer term storage solution, but it’s certainly tidied an area that needed it.

I’m also waiting on a new light for the landing, or gallery as we call it - our kitchen has a part-double height space and so the light upstairs lights both spaces each evening, especially good for when you want some light but don’t want to put the big light on. The silver light that we previously had in our conservatory decided it would work no more, and for no obvious reason. We’d had it a while and had had good use out of it, and while it’s sad to see it go (or it will be when we take it to the tip) it’s also been fun trying to source a replacement that was similar but not quite the same. One arrived last week, but the metal base was chipped and so that’s gone back and I’m waiting for its replacement - hopefully that one will have a smoother journey.

With the weather being much nicer we’ve also ventured out more, heading out to Nottingham by bus for lunch and some small errands. We planned to do some light research for a replacement kitchen sofa - the grey one photographed above is actually a garden sofa, which may finally make its debut in the actual garden. But we didn’t get as far as the sofa shop we planned to, we got as close as next door and had an on the whim visit to the art gallery next door after we saw a painting in the window from an artist we’re keen on.

We didn’t make it to the sofa shop as we ended up buying some artwork for the landing on the stairs. It’s a big space that needs something with impact, and ours is on order. It wasn’t our intention to buy this now, but when you see it and know its right, there’s no point in waiting is there?

There were some very lovely pieces in there with lots of zeroes on the end of the price tag, it isn’t one of those (sadly!) but we were given the full VIP treatment with a tea/coffee while we made our mind up and a glass of bubbly once the deal was sealed. So that should be with us next month - and at some point we’ll restart the informal sofa research too, but not just yet.

A bull and the Burrand stone

We’ve explored different river paths of the Trent in Newark starting from of all places Waitrose car park, but finding paths that cross the river making it easier to reach some of the retail parks on foot, which could be handy at times. The path went further than this, but given the sign and the fact we still had some shopping to do, here seemed as good as place to stop as any.

We joined a guided walking tour of the East Stoke Battle Fields organised and led by the parish church in Newark. It was great to hear more of the history of the area around our village, which is where the last battle of the War of the Roses took place, and to see the memorial stone which is on private property. I’ll share more about our walk later in the week, but in the meantime here’s a peek at the Burrand stone.

And of course we also had our first visit of the year to the Belton Estate, where we finally managed to revisit the conservatory, as well as seeing more of the house than ever before along with the new crafting a new narrative exhibition, but that’s not all. While in Nottingham, and before buying artwork and recovering with a pizza in Rudy’s, we popped along to the Transition & Decay exhibition in another new-to-us venue, the Nottingham Society of Artists Gallery.

TAKE HEED BY GILLI THEOKRITOFF

I’d picked up the flyer at the Newark Quilt Show earlier in the year, and we planned our trip to Nottingham to coincide with the exhibition. The piece I’ve shared above is one of the most thought provoking pieces we saw, and was MOH’s favourite - I even caught him taking some pictures of his own. It turns out this piece is by one of the tutors from the Floral Fancy workshop I attended in January, it’s a relatively small world it would seem. I’ve plenty more pictures to share from the exhibition so look out for those.

And before I go there’s a wedding in the offing for 2026 with my youngest niece and her fiancé sending out their ‘save the date’ details. You can’t beat a wedding, can you?

If you want to read my previous monthly updates in my ‘This is’ series you’re very welcome.