Time for a Treat
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we worked hard with the painting of the kitchen. So for lunch yesterday we visited the local tea room. While Caroline had tea, I had hot chocolate, with cream and marshmallows.
A Week a Home
We now have a week at home to look forward to. The plan is to decorate the kitchen, or at least paint the walls and ceiling. The woodwork and a new floor is for a later date.
With having the day off we stopped for lunch at the village pub and I imagine later in the week we will be visiting the tea room.
May Day
Over this weekend there have been many events and things to do here in Lincolnshire.
As I mentioned in the last post, with this being a long weekend we spent one of the days in Epworth.
On Monday we visited Doddington Hall a local stately home. They were having a vintage event, with classic cars outside and a market inside.
People were invited to attend in vintage attire so we decided we had to.
Caroline wore a classic 1950’s dress, which she had made herself, and so looked very much the part. While I wore some smartly tailored english trousers, a plain Irish made white classic shirt, english brown brogues and a Harris Tweed jacket, topped off with a Fedora hat.
I was surprised how many people had dressed up. Interestingly while couples were dressed up, for singles it was mainly women dressed up, but there were a couple of solo men who had dared to be different. We even had a steam punk.
Inside was the usual collection of vintage stalls, most of them being 1960’s and earlier. At a few recent vintage events we have seen things from the 1980’s being called vintage, which really makes us feel old.
Caroline’s favourite Lincoln sewing shop had a stall there, and the owner recognised the fabric that Caroline’s dress was made of; she had bought the pattern and the fabric from their shop. She asked, and Caroline graciously agreed, to be photographed.
While Caroline was buying a new pattern and the fabric for it, I treated myself to a small leather vintage driver’s license holder. The new plastic photo licence fits nicely.
There were also a few vintage hats but nothing as nice as what I already have.
Caroline then bought a handbag to add to her collection.
Overall a fun morning out and well worthwhile. With this kind of event I was shooting with the Leica M8 and a 35mm Summicron which looked the part. With the challenging lighting conditions and my M8’s limited ISO range, I suffered with a number of shots being blurred due to slow shutter speed, and the interior had mixed light sources, of sun, and several different types of artificial light sources, so the white balance was a challenge.
It was a shame my Leica M10 has not arrived yet.
Epworth
This weekend here in the United Kingdom, its another bank holiday. We decided to have a visit to the town of Epworth. We visited a few shops, bought a few treats and finished up in one of the many tearooms.
Epworth is of course famous for being the home of the Wesley family and is considered to be the home of Methodism.
Weekends come and gone
Its been one of those weekends where we did not seem to do much but the weekend just flew past without the time to do all we wanted.
The usual gardening tasks such as cutting the grass and weeding the veg plot managed to get done but we also had the day in Lincoln and a day with the parents, so not much else got done.
Growing Villages and failing Villages
It seems that living in cities is now the most popular place to live. It used to be once you had hit midlife, you left the cities for the fair villages on England and lived a more peaceful life.
The problem now with village life is that they are either failing due to high prices, ageing population and poor transport or growing into vast commuter villages of modern estates where people seem to just sleep there and drive off in the morning to the city and come back at night, never partaking in village life or contributing.
Our new village seems to have really picked up in the last couple of years. It helped when the pub was saved, we now have a good place to drink with a good restaurant and a community atmosphere. The village school is also successful and we still have a post office. Rarer still, is that we have a small artisan village bakery and now a newly opened tea room also bringing in visitors. It still has the problem many villages have though, poor transport links both public transport and bad roads, but this at least has saved the village from becoming a commuter village and stops people building housing estates here. We seem to be managing, possibly helped by the poor transport links stopping the prices from getting too outrageous.
Catching up with the Garden
Now with the lighter nights its not just weekends we have now to catch up on the gardening. Monday night saw us planting seeds, grass cutting etc. The garden is now once again starting to look like someone looks after it and cares. When you both work full time and have busy lives, the little things like house work and the gardening can suffer.
Quiet Weekend – Tea Shops & Gardening
We had a lovely quiet weekend. Saturday we just did little bits and bobs round the house, then walked to the new village tea room. We indulged with soup, hot chocolate , and then followed this up with chocolate cake. Then we walked back collected Timmy the Greyhound and popped over to the pub for a drink while Timmy enjoyed a treat.
Sunday we finally got to do some more major work in the veg plot. I dug over a couple of plots and then got the potatoes finally planted and watered in. The onions also needed a water, and Timmy then decided it would be fun to play long jump using the veg plot as his landing zone. Fun for Timmy but not to be encouraged.
Cruft’s and the Hound Group
Last week was Cruft’s the international dog show. I like to see how the hound group goes, I am sure that one year a Greyhound will win.
This year it was ‘Frosty’, a Grand Basset Griffon Vendeen, from the Netherlands, who won in the Hound Group.