LYME REGIS

Thank you SO much for all the birthday wishes. It made me really happy to read them along with the wise words about turning fifty. I liked the Scattered Gardener's advice to 'embrace your inner crone'. Love it! Be assured I'm planning to do just that.

I spent the day very happily with family and friends. We had Sunday lunch which lasted well into the evening and ended with us crying with laughter. Great day.

Did all of you who partake in half term have a lovely time? We took a little break in a village just outside Lyme Regis in Dorset. Son was in Spain with the school, so it was just the three of us.

Here is the harbour at Lyme:



And here are the very colourful beach huts:

The cottage we stayed in had a thatched roof and a lovely feel about it. The kitchen full of china in blues and white, stripes and spots. There were lovely patchwork quilts on the beds and a very welcome pile of Country Living magazines on the bedside table:

The cottage was directly opposite the church. I mean, this is how close we were:

(That's my daughter twirling around).

This was the view from our bedroom window. Sorry about the quality of the pic. Don't know how that happened. Let's call it 'atmospheric':

My brother (who's a bit squeamish) said he would have turned around and gone back home, but being opposite a churchyard didn't bother me. The neighbours were quiet and the only time we were disturbed was during the bell-ringers' practice evening. It was LOUD!

As my daughter and I are monkey fans, we took a trip to nearby Monkey World:

The monkeys are all rescue animals. They have fantastic playgrounds to amuse themselves on:

This image is a hands-on exhibit to help the visually impaired get an idea how the monkeys look. I think it's a great idea and have only seen this once before, in Edinburgh castle where there was a hands-on replica of the Scottish crown (much nicer than the English one):

The resemblance to Roddy McDowall is amazing, don't you think?

Lyme Regis is world famous for being a Jurassic coastline and therefore very popular with fossil hunters. We spent a happy couple of hours searching for fossils:

The gray section of cliffs that runs across this next picture was actually in the middle of a landslide as I took the photo. It's a regular occurrence and many new discoveries are exposed after this happens:

The fossils here are so common, some which are on larger rocks have been left on the beach for all to see:

We had a really lovely time. Just what we needed. There were also some lovely shops in the High Street. Of course we did the charity shops, found a shop which sold hand-made hats (purchases were made!) and also a shop which, although wasn't a branch of Cath Kidston, sold so much of her stuff, it might as well have been. I managed to find that CK blue and white polka dot dressing gown that is sold out on the Internet. Did I buy? Of course I did!

Happy days, everyone!

Blessings,

Andi xx

OH NO - FIVE O!

21st February


It's happened. How did it happen? One minute I'm celebrating my fortieth birthday and then, what seems like a couple of months later, I'm hitting fifty.

Forties suited me. I enjoyed being forty-something. I can honestly say that some of my happiest years have been in the last decade. My baby-making days were over, I could just enjoy my children.

I experienced the classic mid-life crisis of re-inventing myself. When the kids began school I threw off my leggings and sweats and went shopping for some REAL CLOTHES. I dyed my hair blond. I enjoyed having some time to look after ME again as well as my children. Gone were those all-consuming baby days. I picked up my writing ambitions again, started community theatre again, began to feel much more confident.

Fifty doesn't feel like that. I'm telling myself to be excited by it and embrace it, but I have a feeling I might be just fooling myself.

Ah well, there's nothing I can DO about it, so I'm just going to enjoy celebrating tomorrow with family and friends and smile as I indulge myself by telling you about three people in the public eye that share my birthday. I'm ridiculously chuffed that they celebrate the same birthday as me as they have all influenced me in some way, and I very much admire all three.

Kelsey Grammer who, as Frasier Crane, has kept me laughing for nearly half my life. When Cheers finished it was hard to imagine another sit-com being as enjoyable and enduring, but Frasier came along and I was bowled over by the wonderful scripts and impeccable performances. To have just a drop of that talent ... It fired my enthusiasm and encouraged me to try my hand at script-writing. I may not have an ounce of the talent that obviously filled the Frasier script-writing room, but I've had such fun trying.

Jilly Cooper - I read my first Jilly Cooper back in 1988. It was Riders and the overwhelming feeling I got as I devoured the book was 'what fun Jilly must have had writing this'. I wanted to experience that fun, too. So Jilly is entirely responsible for setting me on the writing path, and although I now realise what incredibly hard work goes into writing a novel, I'm still convinced that Jilly's sense of fun exudes from the pages of her books and in turn has given me enormous fun writing my own stories. I met Jilly at a book signing years ago. After shaking her hand, I went straight home and wrote with my 'Jilly-vibed' hand!

What can I say? Just, 'thank you, Mr. Rickman, for being born'! Alan Rickman has my complete admiration as an actor. I am constantly fascinated how he can take an ordinary sentence, put emphasis on a word no one else would dream of emphasising, and make the line sound not only totally convincing but bloody fantastic at the same time. His delivery has caused me to look at my own performances to see what I can bring to them. I'm in total awe of his talent. Ruby Wax once said '(Alan) has this sex thing he switches on when he walks on stage' and I have to agree. I once met him at a charity function. He is a very polite, unassuming gentleman, but on stage... WHOA! I'm watching - and I'm liquid!

And they're all older than me!

As I celebrate the very last day of my forties, I send you blessings,

Andi xx

(Jilly photo by Yui Mok. Frasier and Alan Rickman - credits not found)

HAPPY ST. VALENTINE'S DAY

HAPPY ST. VALENTINE'S DAY!

Not to squash anyone's bubble today, but apparently St. Valentine had nothing to do with sweethearts and romantic love. It's not even sure how many people St. Valentine is actually made up of.

According to Wikipedia, there was no celebration of St. Valentine until Geoffrey Chaucer, who mentioned in Parliament of Foules a fictional old tradition of celebrating this day.

The feast of St. Valentine was allegedly (has anyone noticed this word becoming the most used word in English newspapers today?) devised to take the place of the very ancient pagan festival of Lupercalia, which was observed in order to 'avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility.'

Sounds like a jolly event. What are folk supposed to do during a festival that leaves them healthy and fertile? Why, invent St. Valentine's Day! And I'm very glad they did.

Here is the little tin of chocolates M presented me with this morning. I have to say, I'm more excited about the tin than the actual chocolates. Isn't it sweet?

Here are some romantic things I have around the house:

This ornament was bought from a charity shop last week. I think they had a number of them because my friend bought one at the same time. (Floss, have you noticed how I've mixed red and blue? The nearest I can get at the moment to red and turquoise!)

A collection of random hearts I usually keep in a bowl. Here set out on an old piece of lace curtain I have in my stash:

A friend gave me this picture when I was busy writing romantic (and stronger!) stories:

A few years ago my son made this picture for me. It's his version of a piece of art we saw in a gallery. I loved it, but couldn't afford it and he very kindly put this together for me (as it's not an exact copy - rather a fifteen year old's interpretation, I hope we don't get into copyright trouble)



Sorry about the reflection of my lights.

This last picture I won on ebay recently. I fell in love with it instantly and had to have it. There was a frenzied last-minute bidding for it and I won. Just hope none of you was amongst the other bidders:

Once again, sorry about the reflections. It's hard to photograph glass-fronted pictures without getting the reflection.

Have a wonderful St. Valentine's day.

Blessings,

Andi xx

BEWARE - PLEASE READ

Hi Everyone,

Haven't been posting recently as I had a minor op last week followed by a horrible cold, both of which have brought me down. Hopefully I'll be on top of things very soon. Have enjoyed reading all your blogs in the meantime.

I have a message for all those who were affected by the SNOWFALL WIDGET. I'm not sure if it is the thing responsible, but I've just had my credit card bill in and some of the transactions were not mine. All the transactions were from abroad and about £200 has been taken over several payments. There is one other possibility of where my details could have been stolen, but in case that problem with being redirected is responsible, please, please check your credit card statements.

Blessings,
Andi xx

My First Album

Hi everyone,

First I want to say thank you SO much for all the lovely comments on my last post. I think the tureen got the most votes for best find. It really will be used only for very special occasions as the stamp on the bottom reads 'permanent detergent proof decoration', which I take as a warning not to put it in the dishwasher. Anything that doesn't go in the dishwasher is used very reluctantly! I received 22 comments on that post and that's a record.

Speaking of records, there is a fab giveaway over at Dreaming of the Simple Life and to enter we have to post about the first album we ever bought.

Well, I ploughed my memories and remembered that the first album I ever owned was this one:

I was absolutely besotted with this film - my mum took me to see it twice. I came home and announced I was either going to be a nun or an actress when I grew up. Years later I tried for the later, but no way on earth was the first ever going to be realised!

My parents indulged me and bought the soundtrack for me. I think it was about 30 shillings. However, as this was a gift, I don't think it counts as the first album I ever bought, so going forward a few years I believe the first album I ever used my own money for was this:

Anyone remember this series? The albums cost something like 70p and the artists were sound-a-likes. I would have bought it from Alan Freeman's record shop at the Angel, Edmonton probably using record tokens I'd got for my birthday.

Ah, those innocent days *sigh*.

Blessings,

Andi xx

I'M FREE!

No, I don't mean in the Mr. Humphries way (goodness, I'm showing my age now) but rather in the arms outstretched, embracing the world type of free. After being almost stranded in the house because of the weather, I finally got to the charity shops at the end of last week for the first trip of the year, and it felt WONDERFUL!

The kids were at school, M was at work, the dinner prepared and slow-cooking in the oven so I went SHOPPING.

Three of our local charity shops are what true charity shops ought to be - a place where you can pick up a real bargain. Others, who shall remain nameless, charge so much I am convinced that top, or that skirt was cheaper the first time around in Primark. Anyway, this gilet in Oxfam was my first buy and is in the washing machine as I write. I think the best colour to go with this would be a soft dove gray. What do you think? (Remember - I don't do pink):

Every other Christmas when my family are here, we say 'next time, we'll put all the vegetables in tureens and let people help themselves' (we usually dish out for them in the kitchen), but it never happens. Next year it will because I found this large tureen which should be big enough to hold the roasties:




A set of four strawberry forks which my daughter pointed out will be just the thing for 'dipping the strawberries in the chocolate fondue that we always have on Valentine's day' (don't think I didn't recognise this subtle reminder for what it was).

This delightful creature will be wrapped and put away until the autumn:

I thought this print was sweet:

And a collection of books. As usual, the books were the first things I found, so I asked if I could leave them behind the counter and come back to collect them:

Some of the designs in the Craft Collection may be out of date but the techniques won't be. M likes Eva Cassidy, so I got her life story for him. Planet Earth I was particularly pleased to get for my son. I rarely find things for him (high tech stuff doesn't appear very often second-hand!). The spine hasn't even been creased. Neither has the Start Crochet. My friend knew I was having difficulty find the Art of Crochet magazine, so treated me to this book. She was charged £1 for three books - wow! The Accidental Gardener is very amusing as well as being helpful, and last but not least, Looney Tunes - the ultimate visual guide. Fantastic.

I know some of you have been out there already and I've been reading about your finds. Treasure hunting is just so much fun!

Blessings,

Andi xx

Happy Easter?

I was prepared for the Valentine's Day gifts and cards to be in the shops by now, but I have spotted my first Easter egg display in Marks and Spencer this afternoon. No wonder the years seem to be going past so fast when we're frogmarched by the shops to the next celebration. We haven't even finished our Quality Street yet! Anyone else seen an Easter display earlier than this?

And have any of you purchased or tried to purchase this?:

I've been asking in newsagents and supermarkets but they've all sold out. The assistant in W.H. Smith told me they'd had a lot of boxes delivered because they anticipated it would be popular. How right they were. Not a copy to be had anywhere in a ten mile radius of me.

Not to be outdone and not even thinking of paying the prices asked on Ebay, I telephoned the company that launched the magazine, told them of my problem and ordered a copy from them. It should be here next week. If any of you want this first issue and haven't been able to find it, the company web site is: http://www.theartofcrochet.com/

However, something occurred to me while I was ordering my copy...

You know how, when you phone a corporation or shop etc. that recorded voice comes on the line to say 'your call may be recorded'? Well, I asked the guy whether my call was being recorded. I was told that ALL calls are recorded. When I pointed out that I was about to give my credit card details and that they too would be recorded, I was assured that 'only the top, top management of the company get to hear the tapes'.

Oh. That's OK, then, because it goes without saying that if they're 'top, top management', they must be trustworthy.



How many times have I ordered things over the phone and my details have been recorded 'for training purposes'? This fact has only just occurred to me. Have I been slow in realising this? Do other people avoid ordering over the phone for this reason, and is it something we should be protesting about?

Blessings
Andi xx