Living in an English village is never dull! Take last Friday for instance...
We had Wheelbarrow Race Night. It can ony happen in England. Contestants dress up (and the barrow too) One pushes the other rides alternately down the village street downhill to the river ford (deliberately deepened for the night,) through it and back over to the pub, down a pint and do it again - you get the picture? 'Elf and Safety be damned - on-lookers throw bags of flour at runners and each other everyone gets soaked and filthy. They then all end up at the two pubs in the street and get hammered. There's a band and revelry and often a fight.
Living in the middle gets a bit much, however there was respite this year - yet another pub has just opened in the other end of the village so we trouped up there for a quiet pint, to discover most of our friends in there as well. Anyone who was anyone in village life had decamped to the Fleece - to wish it well on opening night of course!
This week too, my daughter and I went to my mum's flat in Sussex to start clearing it for the new owner to come in. So sad, though Mum is in a residential now and loving it she can't take much stuff with her so it has to be moved! Luckily she is not much of a hoarder, but 5 irons? All working! And china for every occasion!
The heat here is non-ending, my lawn is like the Sahara but the veggies are managing to survive. Sweetpeas are lovely this year though, and the scent of pinks as you come through the gate in fantastic. I am posting a piccie of the arrangement I did with them for the drawing room and one of the desert my garden has become. Having just done my stint for church flowers this week I am in the groove - though still am a rotten flower arranger!
Oh,and forward news, my dolls houses are going to Ware museum for the Christmas exhibition
We also found out yesterday one of the dh's daughters had her first baby - we were last to be told as usual but hey it is number 13 for us! Hope they let us know the details before long as I did promise myself I would do a birth sampler if it was a boy and they take me a while. I did a quilt for no 12 but girls are easier to do quilts for - I like the flowery stuff but am not so into the cars/monsters bit.
I'm working on an alphabet sampler I downloaded from a web-site (can't remember which one sadly) I'm doing it on 28 count Permin in two blue shades of DMC and it is really pleasing me. Will post when I have done a bit more than the blocks the letters sit in. That's the problem with down-loading sections you never really know how it is going to look till it is done. It was the same with Mary Wigham which I did a while ago.
