November Skies

Although I've been getting up and going to work in the dark for the last couple of weeks I'm usually home about an hour before dusk and this week I've been sky watching.

The colours are spectacular and ever changing. In fact, they change so quickly that by the time I've run upstairs, grabbed a camera and got out into the garden they are completely different but still very beautiful.

I love to watch them change from pale gold, to soft pink and then turn more vividly intense before the sun finally disappears and the early evening darkness makes an appearance.

I think this is one of the most wonderful shows nature offers us and we can watch, for free, from our own back gardens.

A Quick Book Review

I haven't had a lot of time for reading, or indeed blogging, lately as I've been working fairly long hours at Royal Mail in the lead up to Christmas but one book that I've really enjoyed reading is 'Keeping the World Away' by Margaret Forster. I couldn't resist taking this book out of the library as its whole story, from begining to end, is based around one of my favourite paintings by my favourite artist.

The painting is from a series painted by Gwen John, during the years of 1907-1909, of her attic room in the Rue du Cherche Midi entitled ‘A Corner of the Artist’s Room in Paris’. The painting I have seen most often is the one owned by the Graves Art Gallery in Sheffield. This one shows the corner with a table in the window, a wicker chair against which leans a parasol. A coat or wrap drapes over the chair and on the table are primroses in a small pot. There are other versions of the painting showing the same corner of the room with the window open showing the buildings opposite, an open book on the table and the blue coat but no parasol.

The whole premise of the book is that one of this series of paintings, one with primroses on the table, is lost and explores its passage through time owned by one woman after another from the time Gwen John gave it as a present to her friend Ursula Tyrwhitt to the present day. The first part of the book covers Gwen's childhood in Haverfordwest and Tenby through to her studying, with her brother Augustus, at the Slade School in London, her departure for Paris, her love affair with the sculptor Auguste Rodin, and her subsequent and gradual withdrawal into an interior world. Each of the women who find themselves owning the painting are the kind of women who are different in some way from the expected norm of their age. Independent, unconventional, happy to be alone, striving against unsurmountable odds or unhappy with their lot in life. Each of them, like the artist herself, wanted to 'keep the world away'. The painting is lost in missing luggage on its way back from Paris, found by the person who recieves the valaise by mistake, it is then stolen, bought from a market stall, sold as a means of escape, given as a gift and then sold again. The painting travels from Paris to Hampstead to Cornwall, back to Hampstead, to the Scottish highlands and finally back to Paris where its fate is finally resolved. Although I found some of the women's characters less sympathetic than others and there was a strange moment when e-mails were referred to in a time I thought was supposed to be the 1970s - I may have been wrong on this - I was quite entranced by the book and thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

A New Museum

On Sunday we found ourselves passing through the village of Barlaston and decided to drop down into the Wedgwood factory site to have a look at the recently opened museum building. The new museum cost 10.5 million pounds to build, nearly six million of which came from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

We didn't have time to go inside and decided to save this treat for another day but it was interesting to see the new building. It all looked very shiny and new and having visited the Museum before it was moved from its original place, I can't wait to go inside to see what it is like.

The Museum used to be within the Visitor Centre but when that was refurbished a few years ago it was decided that the Museum needed its own building as there were many more things in the collection than there was room to display them.

The Wedgwood Factory moved on to its present 'garden site' in the 1930s. Its previous site being at Etruria, near Hanley, where Josiah Wedgwood I had a purpose built village for his factory and its workers. The Wedgwood Family lived just up from the factory complex in a house which is now The Moat House Hotel. This area was where the Garden Festival of 1986 was held and is now a huge retail park with leisure facilities like a multiplex cinema, dry ski slope and Waterworld. I found a rather wonderful 'virtual' tour of the Etruria site on the museum's new website here.

If you approach the Wedgwood site from the centre of Barlaston by the village green you pass Barlaston Hall, and it is always a splendid sight. It was rescued by 'Save Britain's Heritage' in the 1980s and restored in the 1990s. Built around 1756 by Sir Robert Taylor for Thomas Mills it was later occupied by Francis Wedgwood, master potter, partner in the Etruria site, grandson to Josiah I and brother of Emma, wife of Charles Darwin.

The old church of St John the Baptist stands close to the Hall and was completely re-built in the 1760s. It is a lovely little church almost hidden from view as you pass through the avenue of trees leading to the parkland surrounding the Wedgwood factory complex.

Cooking Sausages

As Valerie and one or two others asked about the Leek Sausages that I mentioned in my bonfire night post and as I had also promised to share the recipe, we made some for our meal yesterday so I could photograph them. Here are the ingredients:-

Use breadcrumbs, grated cheese, grated leeks, mashed potato, chickpeas, an egg to bind the mixture and of course, seasonings like salt and pepper and mixed herbs if you want. I haven't put any quantities down as you can use whatever you like and just improvise depending on how many sausages you want. It's best to make them fresh on the day you eat them. You can blitz the bread and the chick peas in a food processor.

Mix the ingredients in a bowl until it is dough-like and malleable. Use your hands to roll into sausage shapes and then cover the sausages in more breadcrumbs. This is gloriously messy and sticky but great fun.

Leave the sausages to stand for a little while and then drizzle with oil before you bake them, in a medium oven, until they are lightly brown - about 30 minutes.

Or you can fry them gently in olive oil in a frying pan.

On bonfire night we served them with mashed carrot and potatoes and braised red cabbage. They are also nice with mashed potato and red onion marmalade.

An Autumnal Award

What a lovely surprise! Melody from Teatime with Melody has given me this lovely award - thank you so much.

I have, in turn to pass it on to three fellow bloggers, so I think I will pass it on to:- Teresa at Blueberries, Art and Life, Lynne at Bun Mountain Cottage and Barb at Stamplicity.

Hope you all enjoy it.

A Silent Walk

The weather this weekend has not exactly encouraged the country walking we had intended so we ended up, yesterday morning, on our usual walk around the lake at Trentham. We arrived about 10.30a.m. in a shower of rain and went straight for a warming cup of coffee at the Lakeside cafe before setting off for a rather damp walk. Gloomy and wet it may have been but the colours were spectacular, the last splendid defiance of the dying leaves before the bleak winter sets in.

It was so quiet and peaceful as we walked, hardly a soul in sight; just a couple of hardy rowers on the lake. At 11a.m. they stopped rowing and remaind still their heads bowed, we stopped too, just for a short while to think about how lucky we are and how thankful we are to those who have given so much so that we could be here, now, this very minute, enjoying this beauty.

Then we walked on in contemplative silence each with our own thoughts, hoods pulled up against the rain, toes inside wellington boots getting colder and fingers inside warm gloves gradually begining to tingle with cold. It was time to go home.

Here we go!

The heating is on and the house is warm. The cats are all in for the night, whether they like it or not. As I'm 'cat sitting' next door's cat she too is in and warm with the lights on and the curtains drawn against the coming storm. As if they knew they should enjoy the day and feed as much as they could the birds have been whirling around the garden and bird table all day, starlings, collard doves, wood pigeons, sparrows, great tits, blackbirds and magpies I worry for them tonight, where do they go? How do they cope?

There is an apple cake cooling on the kitchen table and the vegetables are prepared for our evening meal - mashed carrot and potato, red cabbage and leek and potato sausages topped with sliced mushrooms - to be eaten as soon as the worker comes home.

I saw the children on their way home from school rushing in excited anticipation. Outside the light is fading, the street lights are coming on and there is a stillness in the air, the lull before the storm.

So Remember Remember the 5th of November all you like, we are all safe at home, warm, cosy and well fed, curtains closed and fire turned up, protected from the noise and chaos outside.

The Pumpkin

I thought, seeing as it is Halloween, I would trace the journey of a pumpkin from the farmer's field to its final destination. I've only noticed these fields of pumpkins over the last few years and it seems that more and more pumpkins are grown here in the UK. It's not a sight I'm used to but they do look wonderful.

So let's follow the pumpkin from the field where it is picked and taken to storage perhaps and then to a distribition centre; most of the pumpkins will end up in our supermarkets. Some, like the one below will end up at a farm shop, I'm guessing that these ones came straight from field to shop but I could be wrong.

Well, let's purchase the pumpkin and take it home and see what we can do with it. Last year I made 'Spooky Soup' with the flesh of the pumpkin whilst Paul hollowed out the pumpkin to make a 'scary' face . I expect we will do much the same this year.

So, tea lights in the pumpkin face, warming soup ready and a huge bowl of lollipops for the little trick or treaters.

I think we may be ready. Have a good Halloween!

Very Random Things

In a week in which the temperature has plummeted and during which we have had frost, snow, rain, and hail plus a little bit of sunshine - the last of the tomatoes ripened in the greenhouse! How can this be?

The weather, this year, is most unusual and I can't, for the life of me, work it out!

I was angered this week by an incident which happened to my neighbour who suffers from MS and has to walk with a stick. She was out with one of her friends who also walks with a stick. They were enjoying their weekly outing to the supermarket when two well dressed businessmen behind them tutted and said very loudly 'They shouldn't let them out should they?' Absolutely disgraceful! The phrase 'There but for the grace of God' springs to mind.

I've been tagged by Sarah at In the Wee Hours to list six random facts about myself. I always find these things really difficult to do but here goes:-

1. I've worn glasses since I was 7 years old, the teacher discovered I needed them when she noticed that what I was copying off the board wasn't what was written on it. My mother blamed it on the measles even though my bedroom was kept dark; I do remember the curtains being closed against the glare of the sun.

2. I really dislike spiders, although I can, with great trepidation catch them in a jar and take them into the garden.

3. I adore the theatre, I love watching plays especially those of Shakespeare. I used to go to Stratford quite often but I haven't done that for a few years now. Silly really as I live closer now than I did when I used to visit often. Maybe next year!

4. I have a fear of deep, still water, especially in dark, lakeside boat houses and also of the underside of boats in dry dock.

5. I once, many years ago, discussed Jane Austen's Persuasion with the writer John Fowles, he was also, at that time, Honorary Curator of the Philpot Museum in Lyme Regis where we had gone to photograph some fossils, I didn't know who he was then, I found out later. I was mortified afterwards wondering if I'd made a fool of myself. Paul later got a letter from Mr Fowles thanking him for helping with the identification of one of the museum's fossils - we still have it somewhere.

6. When I was a child as well as playing libraries (with mother's books, slips of paper as library tickets and a hot water bottle top as the date stamp) I also played museums - I would rope off part of my bedroom and label things like my hairbrush and the ornaments on my dressing table and windowsill. I don't think I charged an entrance fee. No wonder then that I eventually ended up doing a degree in history with the OU and spending almost 20 years of my life working in museums.

I hope Sarah doesn't mind but I'm not going to tag anyone else. If after reading this you want to have a go then please feel free to take it with you.

Lastly, just a very random photo of Chloe - because she's worth it!

Oh.....

......just thought I'd let you know

......that we have snow.

I don't think it will linger!

I think that soon it will go.

At Tissington

At the end of my post about Milldale I promised to write a post about the village of Tissington in Derbyshire so here it is. Tissington has special memories for me as it was always the venue of our junior school Ascension Day outing to see the well dressings. I remember being on the bus full of excited children, sent out in their best clothes that morning by anxious mothers. We would all be clutching brown paper or greaseproof paper bags full of egg or ham sandwiches - oh, how I remember the smell of those egg sandwiches - we must have had drinks too but I can't remember what they were or how we carried them. I remember the cattle grids as you entered the village and having to walk over them as we left the bus. One year my friend's little brother fell on one and banged his nose - there was blood everywhere - no one thought about 'health and safety' in those days. I would think there would be complete uproar, threats to sue and apportionments of blame nowadays, 'tis the way of the world, but then the teachers dealt with the situation and we all got on with our day.

Anyway, back to the present. Tissington is a beautiful estate village clustered around the hall, the church, the village green and the duck pond. It is, in fact, the typical English village of our childhood dreams and imagination. Its approach is unusually through a gate from the main Ashbourne to Buxton road, up an avenue of lime trees amongst which guinea fowl run free, in appearance it is much like a drive straight to a country house but it is the road into the village.

In The King's England, Derbyshire - my copy published in 1942, a good 15 years before my school outings, Arthur Mee described the village thus:-

'If ever roads lead to sheer delight they are surely the roads to Tissington, where a splendid lime avenue, half a mile long, brings us to little stone houses in gay gardens, gathered in haphazard array around a spacious road with wayside lawns, a fine old Hall of Elizabeth's day, and a tiny church as old again keeping them company.'

It hasn't changed.

The present hall was built in 1609 for Francis FitzHerbert. It replaced an earlier hall, possibly a moated manor house standing to the north of the church, as Tissington has been the seat of the FitzHerbert family since 1465 and they still live there.

Today the hall is a venue for conferences, weddings and civil ceremonies. Pre-booked group visits are accepted and there is a short period in spring and summer when guided tours are available. The present owner is Richard FitzHerbert and if you follow this link to the hall's website you can watch a little film of him guiding you around the inside of the hall. During his introduction he mentions ghost hunts - now how about that for a Halloween celebration?

Across the road from the hall is one of the wells, known as Hall Well for obvious reasons. There are five others dotted around the village and each year according to custom they are decorated with flowers. Here is a link that will tell you more about the history and origin of the Derbyshire Well Dressings.

The parish church of St Mary stands on a hill opposite the Hall. Built sometime in the 12th century inside is light and airy and on the wall near the chancel is a fine monument to some members of the FitzHerbert family. The people depicted below are Sir Francis FitzHerbert who died in 1619 and his son Sir John who died in 1642 with their wives.

Outside in the churchyard the other village folk lie at peace under the trees overlooking the village green and the duck pond.

Visitors can park in the village on designated verges opposite the hall but there is also parking nearby on the Tissington Trail.

A walk past the duck pond takes you to the Tissington Trail. In this village there is a farm butcher and a candle workshop, called A Wick and a Prayer, as well as Acanthus, a pretty gift shop housed in an old joiners workshop and a small garden centre or nursery where the owners sell rare and unusual plants.

There is a tea room in the old barn next to the hall and this is always very popular. We have been in for refreshment on a couple of occasions but this time we had our picnic with us.

So that is Tissington, or a small part of it anyway, I hope you enjoyed the visit.

A Woodland Walk

It is such a lovely day today I thought we would walk in the woods. The early morning mist still lingers in the air. The leaf covered pathways crunch beneath our feet.

As we walk under the trees the quick patter of water droplets make it sound as if it is raining, it isn't; it is just the falling of dew and the remnants of yesterday's downpour cascading gently through the leaves. Drops occasionally spatter us but we don't mind at all.

We carry on into the pine forest, following in the tracks of deer, listening to the birds call and the squirrels scatter. Under the trees it smells earthy and damp; bracket fungus grows on the fallen branches.

Then we are out into the clearing. It is still slightly misty but the sun is burning through. From here we have company, a photographer gazes patiently up into the trees, waiting for the right moment to click the shutter. A couple of walkers meander by, excited dogs on a long lead running ahead in anticipation.

At the edge of the clearing the stands little white house; it is boarded up now. When we first started to walk in these woods people lived here, there were children's swings and slides in the garden, wheel barrows by the back door and woodsmoke curling from the chimney. Now it is empty and forlorn.

The sun is coming out now, glinting through the twisted branches of the trees, as we make our way towards our destination we can feel its warmth spreading on our backs.

At last we reach the lake where the autumnal trees on the island glow and quiver in the sunlight.

The reflections are stunning; the ducks and geese take flight, calling, as if to tell us, of their joy at living here in this magical place.

Milldale

Whilst we were on our way back from Ashbourne and Tissington earlier today we cut across country and dropped down into Milldale. As soon as we entered the village I felt we had been there before and it wasn't long before we remembered that we had walked, two or three years ago, from Dovedale to Milldale, isn't it funny how sometimes the penny drops, or the last piece of the jigsaw falls into place? We decided to park in the car park provided just outside the village on the Alstonefield road and walk back towards the river.

It wasn't raining but the air was damp and the hills behind the village were touched with mist. It was very quiet at this side of the village. Most of the visitors were walkers and had come by foot from Dovedale, as we drove past they were all sitting by the river eating their lunch and some feeding the ducks.

As soon as I saw Polly's Cottage, the little kiosk shop on this street, I remembered having queued at the window for hot drinks and KitKats when we had walked from Dovedale.

The lovely, square shaped stone cottages cluster around the river and some are almost set into the surrounding hillside. This one is sideways onto the road and is typical of the cottages in the village.

Opposite is the lovely cobbled path which is the start of the walk towards Dovedale; the cobbles were very slippy in the damp weather! Close by is a shelter, seat and public conveniences. There is also an information point for the National Trust, who own and manage most of the land in this area. It is housed in a barn which used to belong to a corn mill; one of three mills which were situated along the river. Milldale village is an important industrial archaeological site and in 1993 was designated a conservation area.

The cobbled pathway leads up and over the old packhorse bridge and down onto the side of the river and the pathway to Dovedale. The bridge is also known as the Viator's bridge the name coming from Izaak Walton's book The Compleat Angler. Apparently, as you cross the bridge you cross over the border from Staffordshire to Derbyshire.

On the left of the photograph is the little Primitive Methodist chapel of 1835 which is built at an angle to compensate for the incline of the road. It no longer has services every Sunday but is still open to visitors and the notice on the wall outside says 'Look around you-come inside-give thanks'. I wish we'd had time to go in but I now have an incentive to go back and open that door. After a little walk at the side of the river it was time to make our way back to the car park and thence towards home.

I'll write about our visit to Tissington in a later post.