We probably picked the coldest day of the year when we decided to go to Cantref Farm - a farm perched on the side of the Brecon Beacons that is too bleak to grow anything and therefore has had to become open to the public ...
My friend and I thought we would get there early to avoid the half term rush, only to find that we were the first cars in the car park. What a great place with a full day's itinerary. Eleven a.m - pet fondling. Eleven thirty, pumpkin launching - this involved fighting to stand on the side of the hill in the bitter cold and launching small pumpkins, via a massive catapult, at a Ford Fiesta that some poor soul left their keys in after parking it in a Brecon back street. The children were managing to launch them a pitiful two feet, my friend and I didn't get much further (although I really REALLY tried). However, the blokes there were rummaging for their protractors and trying to employ engineering tactics. I think that the Fiesta will be parked back in Brecon tonight with little damage apart from a few goat hoof prints.
We then managed to slide across the field for lunch and I foolishly forgot that the little one now eats two portions and sharing a sandwich is no longer an option. I managed a few soggy crusts whilst she ate her fill. We got another round in, which was then binned by an over-zealous cleaning assistant as we disappeared for two minutes to rescue the baby off the top of the drop- slide.
When I'd been before, the "tractor trailer ride" was great - hacking off around the fields, looking at sheep. But this time, the Health and Safety people must have been around, as we just went up the drive and back and then round the back of the sheds where they kept the Santa's Grotto and the chained up mangey dogs.
The highlight for me was definately the Mr Ev musical in which a horse dances to some very quiet music. All the kids had to line up to meet Mr Ev and the first one in the queue gave him a big hug and got a hug back and this set the standard and there were lots of ten year old boys rather awkwardly cuddling this pantomime horse. They all shuffled off to kick a guinea-pig afterwards and so their reputations were restored ...
Lorraine Jenkin is an author, journalist and blogger.
Thursday 30 October 2008
Tuesday 21 October 2008
So long, Uncle Ronald
A sad few days really as I went to my wonderful Uncle Ronald's funeral today. He was everything that an Uncle should be - he was a Cornish fisherman on a massive trawler. He had adventures galore and tales that got bigger everytime we saw him - did he really ever fall through someone's roof onto an old lady sat in bed, wish her Good Morning and then walk out the door, after the Roof Running game went wrong? Probably. He apparently did used to tie my two-year-old dad to the OAP's bench in the mid-winter if he had to babysit for him, that is true. But I am not sure whether I got the tractor tyre running down the hill and through someone's front door story correct. However, I do know that anyone who moans about the Youff of Today should listen to my dad after a few pints of Cornish Ale...
Funerals are never fun and aren't supposed to be, but if I ever have to have one (and I don't intend to) then his is what I want it to be like - there was a lot of love in that chapel coming from hundreds of people. Lots of smiles and lots of tears from old and young alike.
I learnt many things today, perhaps the two most important:
1) live a life you want to be in and you will enjoy it and people will enjoy you
2) don't give your baby the house keys to play with in the car when she gets fretty, if you are intending to get home to a dark yard in the rain several hours later.
On a different note, when we got home to a pile of post, there was a letter to me from my publisher, Honno. Huw waved it at me and my heart sank - I assumed it was a pleasant note about my recently-submitted manuscript, wishing me luck (elsewhere) in my future writing career, and asking could they keep it as what a great doorstop it was making. Instead - it was my first fan mail! A letter from someone who sounds like a lovely lady in Dorchester and I don't even think we are related!
Post Script:
My Uncle had apparently just read my book, and that showed what a good bloke he was as I am sure that he wouldn't usually be in the demographic for that kind of thing. I only hope that he enjoyed it and didn't notice that I got my bream and my dogfish mixed up...
RIP Ronald Jenkin, xx
Funerals are never fun and aren't supposed to be, but if I ever have to have one (and I don't intend to) then his is what I want it to be like - there was a lot of love in that chapel coming from hundreds of people. Lots of smiles and lots of tears from old and young alike.
I learnt many things today, perhaps the two most important:
1) live a life you want to be in and you will enjoy it and people will enjoy you
2) don't give your baby the house keys to play with in the car when she gets fretty, if you are intending to get home to a dark yard in the rain several hours later.
On a different note, when we got home to a pile of post, there was a letter to me from my publisher, Honno. Huw waved it at me and my heart sank - I assumed it was a pleasant note about my recently-submitted manuscript, wishing me luck (elsewhere) in my future writing career, and asking could they keep it as what a great doorstop it was making. Instead - it was my first fan mail! A letter from someone who sounds like a lovely lady in Dorchester and I don't even think we are related!
Post Script:
My Uncle had apparently just read my book, and that showed what a good bloke he was as I am sure that he wouldn't usually be in the demographic for that kind of thing. I only hope that he enjoyed it and didn't notice that I got my bream and my dogfish mixed up...
RIP Ronald Jenkin, xx
Thursday 16 October 2008
Early morning wakenings...
There is something about getting up at 6.30 a.m. just because your spouse has to, that makes you feel magnanimous. Even though he is the one going out to earn the crust and I am sat at home all day in front of daytime television eating Crunchies, I still feel that I am doing him an immense favour.
I nip down to make the tea and bring up a large plate of toast while he shaves loud enough to make sure that the children are woken. We all sit in the bathroom drinking our morning drinks and scoffing toast and then he is off with a cheery wave and I am left with two grumpy children. Because we have all been woken before our time, we are miserable and bad tempered all day. The bathroom is left full of cups, and toast crumbs get in the most unimaginable places. I then have three hours to entertain them before school / playgroup even begins, and we've already done breakfast. Luckily we have a jigsaw that is interesting enough to be done over and over and over again to fill three hours.
The tin hat was put on it when we finally reached school to find that everyone else was coming home again. "The water is off! The water is off!" they shouted as they skipped past me and back to their gameboys. Everyone else that is, apart from Year Three who were off on a trip to see a museum and were obviously gutted. So I was left with having to drag the children all the way home again to a house that had no water for the kettle.
"It's OK," I said to a friend, who was taking six other children as well as her own home, "we'll come for a sh*t in your house."
"Sorry," she replied, "someone has beaten you to it and the cistern is empty."
Oh well, what else are libraries for?
I nip down to make the tea and bring up a large plate of toast while he shaves loud enough to make sure that the children are woken. We all sit in the bathroom drinking our morning drinks and scoffing toast and then he is off with a cheery wave and I am left with two grumpy children. Because we have all been woken before our time, we are miserable and bad tempered all day. The bathroom is left full of cups, and toast crumbs get in the most unimaginable places. I then have three hours to entertain them before school / playgroup even begins, and we've already done breakfast. Luckily we have a jigsaw that is interesting enough to be done over and over and over again to fill three hours.
The tin hat was put on it when we finally reached school to find that everyone else was coming home again. "The water is off! The water is off!" they shouted as they skipped past me and back to their gameboys. Everyone else that is, apart from Year Three who were off on a trip to see a museum and were obviously gutted. So I was left with having to drag the children all the way home again to a house that had no water for the kettle.
"It's OK," I said to a friend, who was taking six other children as well as her own home, "we'll come for a sh*t in your house."
"Sorry," she replied, "someone has beaten you to it and the cistern is empty."
Oh well, what else are libraries for?
Tuesday 14 October 2008
Post Script
Just as a small post script to the Blog of 5th October about chainsaws and monster trucks pulling our trees over:
The local farmer kindly offered to put his trailer in the field for me to load all the leylandi brash into it, so that he would burn it for us, rather than having it stacked in his field for the next twenty years. (This followed one of our trees falling the wrong way into the field rather than our garden, due to an Incompetant driving the Monster Truck) I have just been trying to do a bit more loading and was finally getting to the bottom of it all, when I saw a couple of woolly little legs sticking out from under the trunk...
The local farmer kindly offered to put his trailer in the field for me to load all the leylandi brash into it, so that he would burn it for us, rather than having it stacked in his field for the next twenty years. (This followed one of our trees falling the wrong way into the field rather than our garden, due to an Incompetant driving the Monster Truck) I have just been trying to do a bit more loading and was finally getting to the bottom of it all, when I saw a couple of woolly little legs sticking out from under the trunk...
Sunday 12 October 2008
Little Woman
Hello!
And it's back to credit crunch battening down the hatches. I have decided that if the worst comes to the worst, then I need to get the storecupboard full. So, like a little squirrel, I have been chutneying everything that is in sight. We have tomato and apple chutney, runner bean and apple chutney, grass and gravel chutney and, my favourite, toast crust and brocoli bake chutney.
I have also been picking up the windfall apples and am boiling, drying and bottling them too. The trouble is, we are already so sick of apples in whatever form they take, that I don't think anyone will be cracking open a jar this winter. The nice bit is that the house smells of drying apples, which is slightly better than what it smelt of before. It also has an apple slick over every surface which is beginning to bring the fruit flies back out of hibernation.
So, basically, don't do me a favour of any sort for the next couple of months, as the thank you is usually a little jar of something- so far most of which I have been finding slung in the hedge a couple of hundred yards down the road.
The appearance of stigmata that I have given myself with the apple-corer have only been slightly out done by the welts that are across my palms from starting to saw up the logs from our recent chainsaw adventure and that fact that I very nearly cut off my foot with an axe this morning.
Hey ho, must go and flip those apple rings,
Lorraine.
And it's back to credit crunch battening down the hatches. I have decided that if the worst comes to the worst, then I need to get the storecupboard full. So, like a little squirrel, I have been chutneying everything that is in sight. We have tomato and apple chutney, runner bean and apple chutney, grass and gravel chutney and, my favourite, toast crust and brocoli bake chutney.
I have also been picking up the windfall apples and am boiling, drying and bottling them too. The trouble is, we are already so sick of apples in whatever form they take, that I don't think anyone will be cracking open a jar this winter. The nice bit is that the house smells of drying apples, which is slightly better than what it smelt of before. It also has an apple slick over every surface which is beginning to bring the fruit flies back out of hibernation.
So, basically, don't do me a favour of any sort for the next couple of months, as the thank you is usually a little jar of something- so far most of which I have been finding slung in the hedge a couple of hundred yards down the road.
The appearance of stigmata that I have given myself with the apple-corer have only been slightly out done by the welts that are across my palms from starting to saw up the logs from our recent chainsaw adventure and that fact that I very nearly cut off my foot with an axe this morning.
Hey ho, must go and flip those apple rings,
Lorraine.
Sunday 5 October 2008
A gentle calm..
Hello folks!
I have now sent in my tricky second novel to the publisher and feel a gentle calm over me. It is as if there is nothing else I can do and therefore there is no need to panic.
Of course, there is plenty to panic about, the credit crunch is munching at my toes...
Despite that, we spent surely the most fun day ever last weekend with a friend and his chain saw lopping our leylandii which grew in a big circle round the outside of our garden and protected us from the weather and voyeurs. Therefore, we decided to take the bu**ers down.
Best of all, our friend had a Monster Truck that I had to drive (well, inch forward) to pull the trees in the right direction. Someone else tried it and were too busy playing with the (their) gearstick and didn't listen, and the tree went the wrong way over the fence and into the field. Oh, so much fun - and now we have a house-size pile of brash to burn. Roll on bonfire night when we can smoke out the whole village with live-leylandii white smoke.
The downside is that our house is wracked by storms - we have lost slates, water has blown under the door and the early morning dog walkers are frightened by the sight of me in my pants, with morning face, making the tea.
Despite all this, my Christmas list still includes a Chainsaw and Huw's is full of Monster Trucks...
MONster truck, MONster truck - repeat to fade...
I have now sent in my tricky second novel to the publisher and feel a gentle calm over me. It is as if there is nothing else I can do and therefore there is no need to panic.
Of course, there is plenty to panic about, the credit crunch is munching at my toes...
Despite that, we spent surely the most fun day ever last weekend with a friend and his chain saw lopping our leylandii which grew in a big circle round the outside of our garden and protected us from the weather and voyeurs. Therefore, we decided to take the bu**ers down.
Best of all, our friend had a Monster Truck that I had to drive (well, inch forward) to pull the trees in the right direction. Someone else tried it and were too busy playing with the (their) gearstick and didn't listen, and the tree went the wrong way over the fence and into the field. Oh, so much fun - and now we have a house-size pile of brash to burn. Roll on bonfire night when we can smoke out the whole village with live-leylandii white smoke.
The downside is that our house is wracked by storms - we have lost slates, water has blown under the door and the early morning dog walkers are frightened by the sight of me in my pants, with morning face, making the tea.
Despite all this, my Christmas list still includes a Chainsaw and Huw's is full of Monster Trucks...
MONster truck, MONster truck - repeat to fade...
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