Saturday, November 15, 2008
Saturday ramblings and Niton village
I am writing my blog mid afternoon - there are still hours of the day to experience.
But I can guess pretty well what will be.
It is Saturday and it is our evening to join in with the popular TV programmes.
The one difference is that Ashley will be with us. He has experienced Strictly Come Dancing because Liz is a fan - maybe X Factor is not something he would choose to be involved with. Maybe he will go to his room and read.
The general purpose of this stay with us, for Ashley, is to have time for peace and quite and more opportunities to explore his own pursuits.
He expected to spend quite a bit of time in the Crawley Catholic church but he has discovered that it is undergoing renovations and is closed. Weekend Masses are held in the church hall and during the week Mass is at St John's Church, the Anglican church. It is good to see such co-operation.
So far today I have dealt with payments and been to the post and wrapped some books ready to sell this afternoon. This afternoon I will sell one about Snowdonia that I bought in Bangor - wonder if that is where it will return to. There is also one on early 20th century Liverpool.Come along people of Kirklees! Don't you want my book about your 20th century history?
I report that an hour later there was a last minute bid for the Kirklees book and also for one on The Ancient Traditions of Derbyshire. The Snowdonia book is off to Berkshire, not North Wales.
Potatoes have been boiled in readiness to roast later on, to be eaten with slices of roast turkey (from a joint that had been in the freezer for 18 months!).
Bill has painted over the bits of kitchen/dining room wall that still had wall paper showing. It looks better and maybe that is all that needs to be done until the Spring.
My computer is now back in my domain - tucked between new kitchen cupboards and the dining room table.
We still haven't found a way to restore the quality of the type back to what it was when it was first moved. Have we damaged the monitor in some way?
Perhaps Ashley will know - we tend to assume that the young things who have been computer literate all their lives know about such matters.
Bill has washed the car, using the hose attached to the outside tap that was installed with the kitchen. Much easier - except he got rather wet!
He gossipped with a neighbour and discovered what has happened to the Sri Lankan men who lived at the back of us. Well, no that is not quite true - we don't know where they have gone. But we do know that the house has been repossessed. We don't know the landlord who let it go to rack and ruin. It will need a lot of work on it - but maybe a bargain for somebody.
And now back to the Isle of Wight - not much more!
I wanted to share a few pictures of "our" village before we left it. Niton is quite a big village and a living village, not a tourist attraction.
We liked it a lot.
The old postcard below shows the village nestling in the Downland at the south of the island.
A view of old cottages through the lych gate at the entrance to the church. The old local stone arch looks as though it has been part of the village for centuries.
But no - look below and see the postcard from the 1900s looking up towards the church. There is no arch; though the gates were in place.
And to finish with just a couple of cottages that caught my eye during our brief walk round the village.
