Grandma P's Ramblings Through Life

A word of advice......don't get involved with rearranging! It is addictive.

We went over to the shop as planned this morning and just for a change the weather felt quite springlike. The countryside looked lovely with clumps of primroses along the roadside.

The task for the morning was to take out a heavy mirrored back display cabinet.

I cleared the top of the cabinet and then emptied it - 3 shelves worth of bits and pieces. I was surrounded by stuff on the floor which spread into Ken's area, so I was hoping he wouldn't pop in and find my things hindering people's access to his shelves.

Bill took out the glass shelves and he and Jo carried it to the car, keeping fingers crossed that it would fit in. Success! It would soon be on its way.

I put 2 sets of folding shelves in its place and began to play with my things.
There will be a photo next Tuesday - but we just didn't get around to it today.
The effect is what I had wanted and had planned to do last summer and should have done a long time ago.

We had a cup of tea with Jo and I was happy to see some of my bits and pieces being wrapped and taken away.

Then we took the cabinet to the YMCA shop. I hope they make good use of it and sell it well and the new owner will be happy to use it store their treasures.

This afternoon I listed my "special" bits on EBay that I had described yesterday. The first watcher was for the pair of lovely 19th century tiles - yes, I had wondered about collecting old tiles. The first bidder was for the charming milk bottle from a Sussex farm with Mickey Mouse encouraging children to drink more milk.
I have now replied to somebody in Japan who wanted to know the cost of postage for Mishka the china bear, the Olympics souvenir from the Moscow Games in 1980.

Bill was busy sorting out the back garden digging, trowelling and trimming and discarding pots that had cracked etc.
This was when I felt the rearranging urge sweep back over me..... the garage needs sorting badly.
I now have things destined for EBay, eventually, on the shelves just inside the door and shelves further down have what I would have called shop stock, but now I suppose it is mostly destined for car boot sales. There is so much of it. Several boxes that I took out of the shop last summer just can't be emptied for there is no room. Goodness knows how we will cope with it all when May 31st comes - all mine and all Bill's stuff from the shop will have to be absorbed.

I guess the the weather gave me some energy - almost warm at times.
What a shame that I have spied snow forecast again this weekend on the met office web site.
I shall try and do some more sorting in the garage tomorrow, whilst Bill takes a trip to the dump and to a charity shop with a couple of boxes that we have ready for them.

You can imagine that both Bill and I feel weary and our muscles ache. Hooray - time for bed soon.
Goodnight.

Today I have been describing things for EBay - and not a book in sight.

Well, that was tiring day - unfortunately it wasn't customers that kept me on the go.

But I was so absorbed that I haven't thought about April 1st jokes in the newsapapers and TV - but then nothing will beat the item made by Richard Dimbleby (the voice of all grand and solemn occasions) telling us all about spaghetti grower in Switzerland. That was over 50 years ago.
Quote from the BBC website about this spoof..........
"Spaghetti is not a widely-eaten food in the UK and is considered by many as an exotic delicacy."
Times have changed!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/1/newsid_2819000/2819261.stm

I decided as things seemed to be quiet that I would use the time to deal with my own things.
There will come a time in a couple of months when all our unsold stock will have to be removed from the shop and decisions will have to be made about its future.
Some of the better things - and easier to post things - will be pulled out to sell on EBay.
Much of it will be taken to car boot sales, where the prices will have to be a bit less if we want to sell. I decided that over the next 8 weeks I should spend my time reducing almost everything in price.
If everything will end up with a carboot sale price tag, then it might as well start now and if it entices people to buy from the shop then that will save us effort later on - no wrapping and clearing when leaving the shop and no taking it to car boot sale.
I did quite a lot today and I would like to do the same next Tuesday in preparation for when the antiques fair is on a week later.
So, I was back and forth up and down the shop bringing things to the desk and writing new labels for much of the day.
I think all of us in the shop are now working on strategies to make the clear up as easy as possible.
Well, time to enjoy a little more of a relaxing evening.
I want to work in the morning describing things. I have some things waiting that should be listed with a higher opening bid than I normally use and on Thursday there is a 5p listing day for any item and I would like to take advantage of it.
I must have a blood test tomorrow.
And then later we will go to see Jenny who wants some local old photographs, no doubt for the village association or a lecture to a local organisation.
Right, time to put the kettle on. Goodnight.

To begin at the beginning......
this morning I slept for longer than has been my habit. The longer darker mornings have some blessings for me it seems. I didn't wake until about 7 o'clock.
I spent the morning at the computer catching up with EMails.
Bill was busy with chores - garden rubbish and lots of his old photography work to the dump - no little treasures to be picked up there these days. Deposited items are all carefully controlled.
He sorted out our prescriptions and went to the chemist for medication. They never have enough sachets of Questran and so we will have to return later in the week.
He posted EBay parcels - all 7 sold on Saturday had been paid for and have been posted.
He came home and got busy upstairs, changing the bedding on our bed and other tasks.
Then he took his blood pressure - it seems that work is not good for him! The top reading was 168 which is not good. I was thinking that the higher medication dose was getting things under reasonable control - just a bit higher than it should be. He will see the doctor again next week.
I was in the hands of Bill Clinton (the dentist) at 2 o'clock and he repaired 3 of my teeth. Keeping my teeth in a reasonable state is like painting The Forth Bridge - impossible to ever think you have the job completed.
It was a very easy appointment for me - just a little wincing here and there. At moments I felt relaxed enough to ease away almost to sleep lying back in the comfortable chair.
Then we called in to Asda for bread and milk and some other bits.
I have been foolish and eaten some bread - and of course am suffering (so is Bill!) as a result. But sometimes it feels worth it.
Then I worked on the increased postal charges - which of course are passed on to EBay customers. I used the opportunity to re write my postage and payment instructions.
Then I listed all the items that had failed to sell during March - that's 16 things to face the world again.
This evening I have watched Delia Smith cooking Asian food. It is rare that I decide I must buy a new book, but I need her book because I just spend the entire programme filled with pleasure and realise I have forgotten a lot of what she said. I think I shall know more about Asian sauces than I have learned from Mam with the book - I never really knew what to do with Thai fish sauce, but Mam uses it often. I can feel another trip to the Asian supermarket, Wing Yip, coming on - and then perhaps to Ikea because Bill wants some of their big white cups and saucers.
Ans so, soon to bed I think.
Goodnight.

It has been Sunday and we have bought and we have sold - not a great deal in either of those categories.

The weather yesterday evening and overnight was dreadful and of course this put potential stall holders off from setting up their wares.

The roads today, long after the rain had stopped were hazardous with a lot of surface water - puddles and larger expanses. The road sides were like mini streams as water flowed fast down the hills. But the rain did stop and it looked like a pleasant afternoon, but as were in the shop until half past five we saw very little of it.

But it was good that the sun shone to make us feel joyful and aware of that extra hour of daylight at the end of the day - not dark today until gone quarter to eight.

Our buying was in Dorking and Horley.
I am specially pleased with an old wooden storage box with a paper advertsing strip along the side for Oakey's Wellington Knife Polish.
We have owned a knife polisher for many years. This museum piece was a wonderful find - not at a sale, but found thrown on the council rubbish dump in the days when it was just a patch of waste ground where you could deposit unwanted items from lawn trimmings to ... well, to knife polishers.
People were free in those days to help themselves to anything potentially useful.
So the knife polisher cost us nothing. I actually paid £5 for the polish box - they just seemed to belong together.



We were home again by 9 o'clock and pottered the morning away.
Bill looked through all the large mounted photographic prints he did when he was in the camera club. Some may be used to decorate the house and others just are not needed anymore becasue they no longer have any meaning to us. And then there are others which will find their way back into the cupboard.

The afternoon in the shop was quite pleasant, but Bill and I were not as busy as Rose and Di had been in the morning.
One customer was from South Africa and glad to chat. The conversation eventually got around to families and she told us that her grandfather was William Gunn who had played both cricket and football for England in the late 1800s. And it was he who set up the cricket gear company Gunn and Moore, who still produce the most sought after bats today. Much of the ephemera and sporting equipment that had been his is now housed at Lords cricket ground, because she felt it should remain in England.
Conversation with another customer didn't flow so well. I gather he suffered a brain injury and now has the memory span of a gnat!
He asked what a certain item was and we told him - and a just a few seconds later he would bring it again and ask the same question - until he was bored with that item and moved on to another.
He has a "minder" who brings him to the shop because he loves it so and he is given some money to spend. He didn't seem to be able to hold money or figures in his head, but is obviously a reader -at least he said he loved books and bought 2 about Surrey (where he lives).
He also wants to be loved. He likes to keep checking that we feel he is a good customer - and he knows how to bargain. I told him that a £2 book shouldn't really have anything knocked off but he pleaded that as I liked him so much and he was a very good customer that he could have it 10p cheaper. Of course I relented.
He took his prize purchases and a receipt out to his minder and they drove back to Merstham.

Strange that on the Antiques Roadshow - a sort of look back edition - the experts were saying they had to be much more than an expert knowing values and at times had to act a kind of social service, just as we had done earlier.

Well, time to put the kettle on and then get to bed.
Tomorrow I shall visit the dentist at the 4th time of asking. The first time I just felt too fragile after all the hospital stays. Then I had the awful sinus bug and cancelled twice. I guess the sinus bug has gone - but I still feel claggy and cough and splutter.
I shall, of course, wish that I could miss the dentist again tomorrow. It won't be comfortable, but if I am to save what is left of my horrible teeth then I must put up with the repair work.

So, another weekend over.

Few words this evening.

It was a bad night - not enough sleep.
Feeling queasy, feeling tired.
Leaden skies, strong winds and torrential rain later.
Depressing really.

The morning was spent tapping away at descriptions
Roman archaeology,
Laurel and Hardy and the lost film - The Rogue's Song Book.
Merlin and Manchester,
Nursing in Burma - fact; and a novel based on fact about Mary, daughter of King Stephen.
Wade dishes with cartoons for Ready Mixed Concrete company.
An interesting bundle - and people seem to like them for many have been placed in watching files.

And still the rain swept by.

The clouds dispersed later - some blue skies to lift the spirits.

Bill went to collect prescriptions. His not ready.
Methotrexate - a controlled drug can only be written up by one of the doctors.
Good to know that - what would Bill do if that doctor was away on holiday when he was running out? Not that he would actually know this.
Complicated.

Talked with Ashley and Katya (Ekatarina). She went to look up what my princess name should be according to my date of birth.
Hi then from Princess Melody!
She told me that she liked the fairy name I invented for myself... so greetings again from Fairy Sparkle Web.

Dinner - hake wrapped in prosecuted ham, as Bill called it. Italian bacon that is.

Evening watching cycling - World Championships.
Great Britain doing very well and leads the medal table.
We watch courtesy of the red button on the Sky remote - still BBC production.
Not that this brings perfection - pronunciation of the foreign names I know about are often very wrong so I presume the ones I don't know about are wrong too.

Bed soon. Tired and head achy.

We have plans to get up and go to Ford in the morning. It will be cold and it will feel hard. Staying in bed feels so good.
But perhaps we should not shy away from the challenge - would make us feel more normal perhaps.

Goodnight.

This has been an empty nest sort of day.
After all these years I still find it a bit of a wrench to have my young ones leave us.
Ashley has been with us for a week. He is a quiet soul and he has not actually been with us in the house every hour of the day, and yet, once he had gone, the house seemed noticeably emptier and quieter.
We will see Ashley again in 5 weeks when we travel up to Bangor for a long weekend.
Of course I have not had our Jamie leave home for many a long year. It has been eight and a half years almost since we saw him off at Heathrow Airport. Jamie didn't know then that his life was about to change very dramatically, but somehow I sensed that this was a very final farewell - apart from our visits there of course. Sadly they just don't have the money to bring a whole family over to England for a holiday.

Thank goodness that we all feel close enough to want to be in touch almost every day. The wonders of computing mean that, in fact, neither of them seem so very far away.

The emptiness has meant that I found it hard to settle down to any activity much. I have started to describe a few items for EBay.
Bill has had another of his routine blood tests to check any damage that the drugs for rheumatoid arthritis might cause.
We seem to be in and out of the bloods department quite often - but that is really good; it is excellent that so much is being done to monitor our health.

Ashley has just rung to say he was at home - but not without problems and delays.
The ticket he had was for a route taking him first to Watford Junction - bypassing London altogether. But when he got to East Croydon it was announced that the train could not continue because somebody had been killed in the path of a train at Harrow and Wealdstone. He had to continue into London - get the tube with a heavy rucksack and 3 bags to Euston Station and then wait until the line had been cleared by police in order to travel on to Wales.

This afternoon the weather was delightful - just a little window of blue skies and sunshine between the heavy hail storm this morning and the prolonged wind and torrential rain we are promised for tomorrow. It will be a day with time at home to describe more for EBay I think.



This is the blossom on our tree in the front garden. We call it Solly blossom because we named the tree Solly's tree. We bought it on the day when a treasured cat (Solly) had been confirmed as dead by the roadside; it was to make us feel more positive.
It has looked quite wonderful today against the blue sky.



Tulips growing under Solly's tree.

There are signs of Spring of course - but the weather itself became grey, gloomy and wet as the hours passed.

There were workers outside the front of the house busy before 8 o'clock this morning.

Normally we see just a couple of large grass cutters at work, but this morning we were treated to 5 of them racing round the field, swerving to miss the trees at the last moment.
Surely this is a harbinger of the warm days to come - and a message of the need for Bill to get out there and cut the front lawns before long.


Here the 5 men sit and natter after finishing their duties on our field. Soon they were off elsewhere.

We decided that we should not spend all day idling at home - not that Ashley idled. He went into town this morning to attend Mass, only to find it was a funeral Mass and so he he offered up a few prayers and then went to hunt in the town charity shops.

After lunch we went to Reigate to have a short walk up to the castle mound.



The old market hall in the centre of the town - now a coffee shop.



The main road used to pass through the tunnel under the castle mound. Now it is for pedestrians. On either side of the tunnel are doors leading into vast caverns dug out as store rooms and apparently the sand extracted was of a fine quality and speculators made a lot of money from the sale of sand.
There are open days to see the caves and tunnels - we should try and visit on such a day.



This roundabout sits in the middle of the main road and always looks lovely.
It is a treat after a long journey to leave the M25 and descend into Reigate and see the familiar site. There are 2 lovely spreading cedar trees close by.



Here on the castle mound were definite signs of Spring - the bright green new horse chestnut leaves.
We have long noticed that the horsechestnuts come first - and the nearer to London you get the earlier the leaves and flowers appear. Reigate is only about 10 miles north of Crawley - but Spring arrives there a little earlier.



Some pretty shy blue flowers nestling amongst the rocks.


We have visited the castle mound before - indeed it was blogged before in 2006.
So forgive the repetition of pictures of this mock castle - today with a host of golden daffodils in the foreground.



I guess there was a picture like this in 2006 - Bill posing behind one of the mock gun slits.



There is no mystical significance to this pyramid at the centre of the castle mound. It covers a ventilation shaft from the caves and tunnels below.



You might just be able to make out a windmill on the rise before the horizon.
It is on Reigate Heath. A little research tells us that this restored mill (exterior only) ceased to grind grain in 1880 and was taken over as a Chapel of Ease - an outpost of the main Reigate church. Services are still held in the mill, which claims to be the smallest church in England - but then we all know that the smallest is in Sussex; apart from all the others which claim that honour.
Bill and I now look forward to exploring Reigate Heath and the mill/church, which we had not realised the existence of.



More mock castle and daffodils - coming to the end of flowering now.

It was raining by this time and we scurried just a few yards really and into Reigate High Street to explore the charity shops.
We have to accept that people in Reigate are generally more affluent than in Crawley and the charity shops can charge more for things - but good things can be found.
Bill bought some shirts and I bought a dress (maybe for the wedding we are going to in June), and a couple of blouses.

The journey home was in heavy rain.
We were glad to get in and put the kettle on and Bill and Ashley had toasted hot cross buns.

We really have done very little but I feel so tired. In fact I think Bill and Ashley feel tired too.

We will all be in bed early once again.

Tomorrow Ashley leaves us.

Today has been a quiet day in Rocking Horse.

Despite the weather, there seem to have been lots of buyers in the shop yesterday (Easter Monday). But today there were few.

The first was a regular - a man who has asked others in the shop if Bill would split the box of Meccano he has for sale. Bill had been thinking that he ought not to do that. The man bought an instruction manual and then turned the thumb screws (not literally of course) on Bill who then agreed to sell the bits that the man wanted. He felt it was better to get back the money he had spent out now and hope for a bit more on the wooden box and other bits later.
So Bill had 2 lines on the sales sheet today - and there were only 3 more.

One item left me in a quandary rather like Bill had faced over the Meccano.
Joy was selling a pine stand with a drawer. She had already reduced it from £110 to £85, but the couple who were looking at it were offering £70.
I explained that I couldn't possibly make that decision without contacting the sellers first; but both their home phone and their mobile phone were providing me with only answerphone facilities.
The couple were disappointed and felt sure I should be able to use my own intelligence - and so I did.
I suggested that I would take a risk and let them have it for £75. I felt sure that at this stage in the shop's history Joy would rather have it sold than unsold.
And so then the couple had the task of fitting it in the boot of a low two seater sports car, which already had a huge dog as a passenger.
Fortunately when Joy and Peter popped in later they seemed content at what I had done - though we would all like to get the top price for things where possible.
Stella called in at the shop towards the end of the day - good to have some friendly company for a while and hear about folks from the athletics world.
Bill and Ashley were not far behind. Ashley had thought of going to London today but felt he would be better off saving money and energy.
We left at half a minute to five - that's the last time I will leave that early. After the clocks are put forward at the weekend to summer time we stay open until half past five.
We will have another quiet day tomorrow at home.