My apologies, Sandemaniac. For some inexplicable reason I thought the 'snouty' question was from Heavenlyannie.
We once viewed a house near CornishHall End, before we found the Stansted house. It was just a tad too isolated for us.
Late 1975 or early '76, I think it was, when Elder Son was just a few months old.. My recollection is of a track across a couple of fields and no other property within hailing distance.
Of course, after all this time my memory might be exaggerating the isolation, but as a non-driver it seemed an awfully long way from anywhere.
Tatze is a well behaved dog but, apart from scent work and mantrailing, she hasn’t bee trained to any degree.
I didn't know dogs could do degrees?
They do dogrees
Indeed they do!
Echo has monthly assessments and could be withdrawn at any one of them. If there is anything dodgy in their temperament or behaviour they get a ‘mark’ on their record. I’m glad to say all seven of mine have never had a mark by their name and all have passed with flying colours. *proud*.
Keir, also a Golden Retriever, went a step further and is dual trained - he’s a hearing dog and a guide dog. That’s like a First dogree - and he did go to Oxford for his hearing dog training!
In non-Covid tomes I do scent work and Mantrailing with Tatze - but she doesn’t get dogrees for it, her ‘work’ is just for fun.
Yesterday we spent the evening playing games online with our eldest, using Board Game Arena.
Bitter cold walk this morning, with a few flakes of snow beginning to fall. Just started the Zoom church service, and this afternoon is church monthly gaming afternoon, where our son will join us again.
Got to the supermarket reasonably early, so not too busy. Noticed some oddities in the stocks. The two brands who produce spreadable 100% butter are Kerrygold (Irish) and President (French) were in very low supply, displaced on to top shelves in an ominously 'we don't expect more any time soon' manner.
Late 1975 or early '76, I think it was, when Elder Son was just a few months old.. My recollection is of a track across a couple of fields and no other property within hailing distance.
Of course, after all this time my memory might be exaggerating the isolation, but as a non-driver it seemed an awfully long way from anywhere.
Not my old place, then, as both sides were firmly inhabited then. However I can think of a few houses that might fit the bill, especially down Eggshell Lane, which really is the back of beyond. But a good call to be somewhere else if you didn't drive - even then, I doubt there was more than a bus a week.
I am an idiot. I dismantled the old dining table to make room for assembling the new one (and to get it out when the Van Man comes to pick it up).
I then opened the box of the new one to discover it was just the table top - no legs. I have a vague feeling there may have been something about three boxes mentioned somewhere, but when it came in one, I just assumed it had been packed differently.
Are the other boxes somewhere to be found? Or did they just deliver one single box? That'd be rather rude of them!
Please don't blame yourself. I hear stories of Nobel Prize winners and assorted geniusish folks who literally painted themselves into a corner, coz omitting to work their way towards the door!
In other news, we have snow, not really settling, but making walking miserable. We got out early to avoid the worst of the crowds and were walking through small flakes throughout. Apparently it's going to continue all day and night.
I ordered 4 items from the same retailer and they are all coming separately - including a) a lamp and b) the bulb for the lamp.
That's quite comforting, assuming they come reasonably soon ...
It is snowing in a desultory way here, not enough to lie, but temperature a steady 1°C.
We've only had a few wee flurries, and they haven't lain either so far. That'll suit me fine.
I've had a message from the lady who's taking the old set to say Van Man will be here between 6 and 7 this evening, so I'm glad I was able to dismantle it. I'll be eating off a wee side table until the legs arrive though!
I ordered 4 items from the same retailer and they are all coming separately - including a) a lamp and b) the bulb for the lamp.
That's quite comforting, assuming they come reasonably soon ...
It is snowing in a desultory way here, not enough to lie, but temperature a steady 1°C.
We've only had a few wee flurries, and they haven't lain either so far. That'll suit me fine.
I've had a message from the lady who's taking the old set to say Van Man will be here between 6 and 7 this evening, so I'm glad I was able to dismantle it. I'll be eating off a wee side table until the legs arrive though!
You could put the table top on a few stacks of books and recline alongside it to eat, New Testament style.
You could put the table top on a few stacks of books and recline alongside it to eat, New Testament style.
Nice idea, but I don't think so - it weighs a ton (metaphorically speaking) and I've now got it lying face-down in readiness for attaching the legs (assuming they arrive).
Van Man is apparently on his way, so I'll soon be rid of the old ones.
I ordered 4 items from the same retailer and they are all coming separately - including a) a lamp and b) the bulb for the lamp.
That's quite comforting, assuming they come reasonably soon ...
It is snowing in a desultory way here, not enough to lie, but temperature a steady 1°C.
We've only had a few wee flurries, and they haven't lain either so far. That'll suit me fine.
I've had a message from the lady who's taking the old set to say Van Man will be here between 6 and 7 this evening, so I'm glad I was able to dismantle it. I'll be eating off a wee side table until the legs arrive though!
You could put the table top on a few stacks of books and recline alongside it to eat, New Testament style.
I was thinking you might need to get some sushi in.
Please don't blame yourself. I hear stories of Nobel Prize winners and assorted geniusish folks who literally painted themselves into a corner, coz omitting to work their way towards the door!
A reasonably eminent scientist of my acquaintance (he doesn't have a Nobel, but does have a couple of lesser prizes) managed to hurt himself quite significantly by leaning a ladder against a tree branch, then cutting off the branch. He did at least have the ladder on the tree side of the cut, but seemed to have ignored the fact that the remaining branch would spring upwards when relieved of the weight of most of the branch. And so the branch went up, and he, the ladder, and the chainsaw went down.
Please don't blame yourself. I hear stories of Nobel Prize winners and assorted geniusish folks who literally painted themselves into a corner, coz omitting to work their way towards the door!
When I ran Customer Service for a domestic paint company, one of my favourite calls was from a chap who rang to ask when his floor varnish would dry, as he had done the hall floor and put the wife and kids in the car.
I had to point out to him that had he read the label, he'd have seen that it clearly said that it should be ready to be walked on in 16-17 hours ! <killingme>
The old table and chairs are gone, and after I e-mailed Wayfair about the table legs, I got a very nice reply saying that elements of orders sometimes got separated, and they'd be looking into it and hope to get the rest delivered in "the next business days".
Not quite sure what that'll mean, but at least they're doing something.
Snow has settled overnight - yesterday it melted on the roads, but not now. We have a ramp up to the estate road, and people have already gone to work and spun wheels on it. So I trotted out with my bag of salt and sprinkled the tracks, as I have done other years, and when I had emptied my bag, along came the tractor with the salt in its trailer and slung more salt where I had treated it, but not on the section I hadn't been able to do. They are not employed by the county highways to do this, but by the village. Highways have not gritted overnight, so the actual roads are slithery.
Kent has history with salting when needed. They have been out on other nights recently, I'll give them that. When there was no snow and no ice.
Light snow here, I just went for a short walk this morning as the weather is not suitable for Great Ambling (what a good name for a small village).
I've done my morning admin and am now preparing for the mountain of marking this afternoon (short essays on safeguarding) that should have been done last week but wasn't due to the disruption. I also appear to have an unexpected meeting this evening.
We've been for a Lesser Ambling this morning. Just 30 minutes, but my hands were very cold by the time we returned despite wearing two pairs of gloves. No snow to speak of, just a dusting here and there.
I'm now off to do a bit of knitting before lunch while listening to my husband playing 78s on his old wind up gramophone in the next room.
It's just started again here. I am awaiting a supermarket delivery, due by 11, but obviously seriously held up. Road still not gritted. I can't start anything I can't stop until they arrive (which they will, I've confirmed on the phone). And I really want to go to sleep, as I woke too early and couldn't get back to sleep properly, so everything is out of synch.
We've got just a dusting of sn*w here; there was a short but proper flurry about half an hour ago, but you can still see the grass through the white, so nowhere near being Proper Snow™ so far, and the sun's splitting the trees.
I ought to take a little amble either over the road to the butcher's or down to Tessie's; my brother and sister-in-law are coming out for a bite of supper tomorrow and I said I'd make a chilli. We'll have to eat it off our laps if the table legs don't arrive, but that's a minor detail ...
Brunch chez Piglet was avocado on TOAST, with tomatoes and BACON on the side, and very nice it was too.
It’s been snowing since before 8:30 (when I opened the curtains) and even though the ground is frozen nothing is settling.... yet. I should go for some Middle Ambling before it settles but I am trapped by a cat asleep on my lap.
We've got snow, a fairly thorough dusting when we woke up, hasn't really stopped since. It's not so bad on the roads as they're being cleared by traffic, but settling everywhere else.
We got out for our regular Forest walk, the one that gets boring at this time of year as it's about the only accessible circuit on tracks, so passable for my dodgy-jointed offspring. It was quite enjoyable in the Forest, really unpleasant for the 10-15 minute walk there and back, both more exposed to the wind and horizontally falling white stuff and walking on ungritted, uncleared, packed into ice slick pavements.
Lunch was a version of a Gail Duff leek soup recipe, where I looked at the requirements for tomato puree and white wine and substituted harissa.
I believe the Amblings (Great, Lesser, and Middle) are to be found in the County of Suffix, which was added to England as a bit of an afterthought some time in the dim and distant past.
It also includes the quiet market town of Little Doing, and the sleepy village of Great Snoring.
O, and the ever-busy tongues of suburban Much Gossip...
Snow and Ice here, with the obligatory east wind, but our local roads have been gritted (having one's Tory MP living at the bottom of one's road probably helps). My weekly trip to Tess Coe was easily accomplished - little traffic, and few people actually in the shop. PIES, SOUP, and MEAT PUDDINGS, together with WINE, are now neatly crammed into the galley cubbud.
We've got snow, a fairly thorough dusting when we woke up, hasn't really stopped since. It's not so bad on the roads as they're being cleared by traffic, but settling everywhere else.
We got out for our regular Forest walk, the one that gets boring at this time of year as it's about the only accessible circuit on tracks, so passable for my dodgy-jointed offspring. It was quite enjoyable in the Forest, really unpleasant for the 10-15 minute walk there and back, both more exposed to the wind and horizontally falling white stuff and walking on ungritted, uncleared, packed into ice slick pavements.
Lunch was a version of a Gail Duff leek soup recipe, where I looked at the requirements for tomato puree and white wine and substituted harissa.
You're lucky. The optimistic predictions of heavy snow here have been sadly unfulfilled.
Yikes! I don't like the thought of falling down at the same time as a running chainsaw!
Is he ok now?
Perfectly fine, yes. By either luck or judgement, he managed to avoid interacting with the chainsaw as he fell, so his only injuries were from the fall. But the presence of a running chainsaw does add a certain frisson.
I went for a Great Ambling with Echo this morning. I was sweating glowing when I got home - I’d wrapped up so warm against the freezing wind! Plenty of blizzardy flurries, but no lying snow, I’m glad to say. You can see the Pennines and the snow-line from here - very pretty but it’s welcome to stay there!
I can't understand this antipathy to snow. It's the part of Winter I most look forward to.
I love it when I’m snowballing, sledging, snowman making and generally playing in it.
But, all too often, it compacts and makes the going treacherous, especially living in the hills. So I’d rather look at it than walk in it.
I dunno, I never have any problem with walking it and I'm the sort of person who can't walk down a corridor without hitting the walls. It just happens so rarely and generally lasts such a short time that I never get a chance to get annoyed by it.
The sn*w falling here is distinctly lacklustre, nay, desultory. A few half-hearted flurries is all.
Be careful what you wish for, I know, but I would prefer it to do the job properly today, and then bugger off so that the Sun can shine nicely on it tomorrow, and melt it all away before it becomes Horrid Slush...
I always used to like snow in the UK. I still like it, most of the time, although when there's a foot or so of the really wet heavy stuff that needs shoveling off my driveway, I feel a little less charitable towards it.
The overnight snow has disappeared and though we have had flurries on and off all day, nothing has settled. Hoping there is no more overnight as there is a funeral to attend tomorrow a few miles away. Interesting, as the deceased was a Christian but the daughter is Buddhist.
There was enough of a flurry when I was coming back from Tessie's that I deployed the hood of my coat (it's a bit rubbish - it's so big I can't see where I'm going), but it's still not enough to be too worried about - yet.
The dining table saga continues: I had an e-mail this morning saying they were refunding the payment - not what I want - so I replied saying couldn't they just send the legs?
They said something about not being able to ensure that they'd be delivered as the leg parcels had been wrongly labelled, and I should hold on to the top for a fortnight in case they are delivered, but after that I'm "free" to dispose of or sell the top!
That'll be a "no". I haven't got space to store a useless table top, I have nothing to eat off and how the **** am I supposed to dispose of it?
To say that I'm pissed off would be putting it mildly.
Is there a way of getting extra legs for that table, Piglet? - I have seen different types of legs for DYI furniture assembly in a number of shops here.
I am really sorry to hear about your woes.
I hope people will be able to give you a leg up, eventually; that argument of having mis-labelled it clearly doesn't have a leg to stand on. (Ok, I better leg it.)
I wouldn't call what we are having now even a half-hearted flurry. I could go out without a coat. We finally had the road gritted by a farmer and tractor this afternoon, and it is quite clear, but I am not going out.
That's a right pain @Piglet but if they are going to refund you anyway, and the legs may still arrive (I think that's what you're saying) I would hang on for a week or two as it sounds as though you might end up with a table for free?
I went out before lunch for Cold Walking and it was reasonably nice if I was sheltered and the sun was out but for most of the time it was overcast and there was an icy wind. I tried hard to enjoy seeing the snowdrops (and some primroses and daffodils - far too early) out but I was really only doing it because Exercise Is Good For You and I was relieved to get back into the warm.
I await my first online grocery delivery this evening and have also managed to snag the same slot for next Monday evening.
Our Christmas parcel arrived with Nenlet2 today and as it turns out it was good timing. He worked all weekend so is taking today off and I'm hoping he and his partner are having a Christmassy time together. It was snowing where he is when he messaged us this morning, so a festive sort of feel.
I've also just ordered some books I want to read and am looking forward to their arrival. I love a new book... or two or three..
I had hoped to Amble today but I had to phone the doctor and was told that they'd phone back. So I stayed in ... nothing all morning. Re-phoned them at 3.30 to be told that they'd had an exceptionally busy morning, should be phoning after 5pm. No desire to go ambling now; and I know that, if I do go out, the doctor will find A Spare Moment and I won't be in to receive her girl! Ah well ...
Comments
We once viewed a house near CornishHall End, before we found the Stansted house. It was just a tad too isolated for us.
Of course, after all this time my memory might be exaggerating the isolation, but as a non-driver it seemed an awfully long way from anywhere.
Indeed they do!
Echo has monthly assessments and could be withdrawn at any one of them. If there is anything dodgy in their temperament or behaviour they get a ‘mark’ on their record. I’m glad to say all seven of mine have never had a mark by their name and all have passed with flying colours. *proud*.
Keir, also a Golden Retriever, went a step further and is dual trained - he’s a hearing dog and a guide dog. That’s like a First dogree - and he did go to Oxford for his hearing dog training!
In non-Covid tomes I do scent work and Mantrailing with Tatze - but she doesn’t get dogrees for it, her ‘work’ is just for fun.
Bitter cold walk this morning, with a few flakes of snow beginning to fall. Just started the Zoom church service, and this afternoon is church monthly gaming afternoon, where our son will join us again.
Not my old place, then, as both sides were firmly inhabited then. However I can think of a few houses that might fit the bill, especially down Eggshell Lane, which really is the back of beyond. But a good call to be somewhere else if you didn't drive - even then, I doubt there was more than a bus a week.
I then opened the box of the new one to discover it was just the table top - no legs. I have a vague feeling there may have been something about three boxes mentioned somewhere, but when it came in one, I just assumed it had been packed differently.
What a maroon.
Please don't blame yourself. I hear stories of Nobel Prize winners and assorted geniusish folks who literally painted themselves into a corner, coz omitting to work their way towards the door!
In other news, we have snow, not really settling, but making walking miserable. We got out early to avoid the worst of the crowds and were walking through small flakes throughout. Apparently it's going to continue all day and night.
It is snowing in a desultory way here, not enough to lie, but temperature a steady 1°C.
That's quite comforting, assuming they come reasonably soon ...
We've only had a few wee flurries, and they haven't lain either so far. That'll suit me fine.
I've had a message from the lady who's taking the old set to say Van Man will be here between 6 and 7 this evening, so I'm glad I was able to dismantle it. I'll be eating off a wee side table until the legs arrive though!
You could put the table top on a few stacks of books and recline alongside it to eat, New Testament style.
Hapus nawr? (Happy now?)
Nice idea, but I don't think so - it weighs a ton (metaphorically speaking) and I've now got it lying face-down in readiness for attaching the legs (assuming they arrive).
Van Man is apparently on his way, so I'll soon be rid of the old ones.
Yes, but our nerves are torn to shreds!
I was thinking you might need to get some sushi in.
A reasonably eminent scientist of my acquaintance (he doesn't have a Nobel, but does have a couple of lesser prizes) managed to hurt himself quite significantly by leaning a ladder against a tree branch, then cutting off the branch. He did at least have the ladder on the tree side of the cut, but seemed to have ignored the fact that the remaining branch would spring upwards when relieved of the weight of most of the branch. And so the branch went up, and he, the ladder, and the chainsaw went down.
Is he ok now?
When I ran Customer Service for a domestic paint company, one of my favourite calls was from a chap who rang to ask when his floor varnish would dry, as he had done the hall floor and put the wife and kids in the car.
I had to point out to him that had he read the label, he'd have seen that it clearly said that it should be ready to be walked on in 16-17 hours ! <killingme>
Not quite sure what that'll mean, but at least they're doing something.
Kent has history with salting when needed. They have been out on other nights recently, I'll give them that. When there was no snow and no ice.
I've done my morning admin and am now preparing for the mountain of marking this afternoon (short essays on safeguarding) that should have been done last week but wasn't due to the disruption. I also appear to have an unexpected meeting this evening.
I'm now off to do a bit of knitting before lunch while listening to my husband playing 78s on his old wind up gramophone in the next room.
I ought to take a little amble either over the road to the butcher's or down to Tessie's; my brother and sister-in-law are coming out for a bite of supper tomorrow and I said I'd make a chilli. We'll have to eat it off our laps if the table legs don't arrive, but that's a minor detail ...
Brunch chez Piglet was avocado on TOAST, with tomatoes and BACON on the side, and very nice it was too.
We got out for our regular Forest walk, the one that gets boring at this time of year as it's about the only accessible circuit on tracks, so passable for my dodgy-jointed offspring. It was quite enjoyable in the Forest, really unpleasant for the 10-15 minute walk there and back, both more exposed to the wind and horizontally falling white stuff and walking on ungritted, uncleared, packed into ice slick pavements.
Lunch was a version of a Gail Duff leek soup recipe, where I looked at the requirements for tomato puree and white wine and substituted harissa.
It also includes the quiet market town of Little Doing, and the sleepy village of Great Snoring.
O, and the ever-busy tongues of suburban Much Gossip...
Snow and Ice here, with the obligatory east wind, but our local roads have been gritted (having one's Tory MP living at the bottom of one's road probably helps). My weekly trip to Tess Coe was easily accomplished - little traffic, and few people actually in the shop. PIES, SOUP, and MEAT PUDDINGS, together with WINE, are now neatly crammed into the galley cubbud.
You're lucky. The optimistic predictions of heavy snow here have been sadly unfulfilled.
Perfectly fine, yes. By either luck or judgement, he managed to avoid interacting with the chainsaw as he fell, so his only injuries were from the fall. But the presence of a running chainsaw does add a certain frisson.
❄️ ⛄️
I love it when I’m snowballing, sledging, snowman making and generally playing in it.
But, all too often, it compacts and makes the going treacherous, especially living in the hills. So I’d rather look at it than walk in it.
I dunno, I never have any problem with walking it and I'm the sort of person who can't walk down a corridor without hitting the walls. It just happens so rarely and generally lasts such a short time that I never get a chance to get annoyed by it.
Yaktrax Boogie, Yaktrax.
Absolutely fantastic things for walking on compacted snow/ice.
Be careful what you wish for, I know, but I would prefer it to do the job properly today, and then bugger off so that the Sun can shine nicely on it tomorrow, and melt it all away before it becomes Horrid Slush...
The dining table saga continues: I had an e-mail this morning saying they were refunding the payment - not what I want - so I replied saying couldn't they just send the legs?
They said something about not being able to ensure that they'd be delivered as the leg parcels had been wrongly labelled, and I should hold on to the top for a fortnight in case they are delivered, but after that I'm "free" to dispose of or sell the top!
That'll be a "no". I haven't got space to store a useless table top, I have nothing to eat off and how the **** am I supposed to dispose of it?
To say that I'm pissed off would be putting it mildly.
If there's enough snow, you could slide down hills on it?
(Seriously, if you need to dispose of it, I'd post it on freecycle. Somebody'll probably want it for something.)
I am really sorry to hear about your woes.
I hope people will be able to give you a leg up, eventually; that argument of having mis-labelled it clearly doesn't have a leg to stand on. (Ok, I better leg it.)
I went out before lunch for Cold Walking and it was reasonably nice if I was sheltered and the sun was out but for most of the time it was overcast and there was an icy wind. I tried hard to enjoy seeing the snowdrops (and some primroses and daffodils - far too early) out but I was really only doing it because Exercise Is Good For You and I was relieved to get back into the warm.
I await my first online grocery delivery this evening and have also managed to snag the same slot for next Monday evening.
Our Christmas parcel arrived with Nenlet2 today and as it turns out it was good timing. He worked all weekend so is taking today off and I'm hoping he and his partner are having a Christmassy time together. It was snowing where he is when he messaged us this morning, so a festive sort of feel.
I've also just ordered some books I want to read and am looking forward to their arrival. I love a new book... or two or three..
At least I have a table with legs ...
They said it wouldn't appear in my bank account for a few days anyway, but I'll keep an eye open.
They're now saying they can't look into it because they've refunded the money, and also that I can't reorder it, as it's now out of stock.
Sweary words.