Let it snow

This is more like it.  Let it snow and the whole world becomes a friendly place, where people talk to you, very britishly about the weather, then invite you back to theirs for tea to admire their wallpaper.  I kid you not...

So, I had had about three hours sleep, Jam said he would take Rowan for a walk and when he looked outside there was a gorgeous blanket of snow everywhere. 

The child inside yelled 'get out there girl, sleep shmeep, plenty of time to do that when he's left home'.... so we togged up and skipped, well trod carefully outside, over the stile, onto the circuit that takes us to the farm, through the field, up the hill to the church then back down through the village. 



We crept through the fields, stopping for a quick photoshoot, guessing which animals had made their tracks in the snow.  At the top of the hill by the church we met a local man and pondered whether there were cows or not in the field in the distance, he was convinced they were a shed of sorts but on his zoom lens of the camera they were definitely two cows, looking frozen around a bale of hay. 

A small crowd of people were out sledging, I guess that will include us in a couple of years, everyone was smiling and laughing. 

In the local shop we bumped into a lady we'd met in the lane when we had first moved in and she invited us back for tea. A cuddle with Rowan, a spot of piano playing by Jam and...



 the wallpaper...

What a treat.  What a day.  We got home, kindly turning down more offers of tea from more neighbours in need of getting home to change the babe's nappy and make some lunch, have a nap, make some gifts, have a laugh and look at the sunset...

Northcott Mouth

We made a trip to Northcott Mouth near Bude this weekend for a friend's 30th birthday.  The cottage we stayed in was right on the beach and beautiful, if not a little cold in the bedrooms.  Luckily our house is also quite cold so we weren't worried about freezing the baby.  We arrived late at night and couldn't find it, asking a security guard at a holiday camp, who said he couldn't tell us - we weren't sure if he knew but didn't want to say or not!  In the morning the view from our bedroom was breathtaking.  After breakfast, we walked along the beach, Jam did some rock stacking and I played the violin whilst Rowan slept in the sling.  Some of the others donned wetsuits and went for a dip.  A couple of the gang made a white spiral line with all the stones that had white lines running through them.

 
We ate organic roasted vegetables and soups with chunky home-made bread.  We skipped up to the clifftops to drink port and watch the sunset.  We had lots of instruments and music was played morning til night.  Folky bluegrass music, sometimes a bit too bluegrassy for Jam's liking and I did some spoof rapping and silly song singing on top of it on the second night, after a glass of port! I felt like my old self made an appearance that night, to a new audience.  I made them laugh til they cried and it reminded me of my old friends now in pastures new.  I didn't get much sleep due to my boobs being in constant demand through out the night, but the huge grin on Rowan's face more than made up for it every time and at least I slept soundly in the car on the way home.

On our way there we stopped off at Gantie's ( a cross between grannie and auntie) so she could see Rowan.  She's been poorly lately and hasn't been able to visit.  I was horrified and slightly amused when she tried to feed him some chocolate on her finger - 'No'  I screamed, on deaf ears, 'No' again much louder, 'don't you dare, he's only 4 months old!' 'Oh, but I just want to treat him dear'...  I can see we may have problems there in the future, hopefully I nipped it in the bud, bless her!  She gave us a beautiful sheepskin for him to lie on and he loves it, even if he was a little bit sick on it, it was a godsend at the cottage to keep him warm and content.  She plied us with goodies, bulbs for the garden, a beautiful hand-knitted hoody cardigan for Rowan, birdseed, peanut butter, schloer and kind hearted god fodder in the form of small daily strength bible reading books. Hmmm.

The View at Night

It's not quite the same as looking down the canal, but it's not a bad view either! This was after a beautiful day of sunshine and I am standing right outside our front door, or is it the back door, it's either or, really, for they are next to each other, which is slightly odd in the first place and certainly confuses guests who aren't sure which door to knock on, although both doors have doorbells, which are very loud, which is a good thing, for if doorbells were quiet then what would be the point?

Ah, distraction, there I go again, started talking about the sunset and ended up on the doorbell, which doesn't actually get rung very often anyway and in fact the first time it did it startled us - what was that? A doorbell? You mean there's somebody outside wanting to see us? But we're in the middle of nowhere! Who found us? Well, of course it was the postman, asking if I didn't want the parcel he had conveniently placed beside the front door when we were out last week and I hadn't seen it, for being used to the city I wasn't expecting post to be left outside my door and still be there a week later! He said he had posted a note through on the back of another envelope, but I fear that may have fallen straight into a recycling box behind the door and luckily I phoned my friend who had sent me some books to confirm they had actually arrived just as she was in a very long (London) post office queue trying to ascertain where the parcel was!

She sent me the second two books in the Millenium trilogy by Stieg Larsson, which I wolfed down like a hungry bird. What a great read and what a great thing breast-feeding is! So much time to read! I'm open to any suggestions of good reads out there please?! Ooh, time for the next book I'm gulping down like a new mother out on the town that's not drunk alcohol for over a year - The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien (I'm not drinking alcohol at the moment really, although I did try some of our slo gin that we made last year - ooh, very sweet and yummy, must work like medicine for the little boy!) ;)