Bits and pieces

There is not much news on the home front in this cold weather, patchwork and spinning has been my main occupations.  Good news came through this weekend, the scaffolding at the cottage had at last come down after three months. My son-in-law had gone to turn up the heating there on a bitterly cold night, and it wasn't there.

Anyway a photo arrived this morning -'it looks good naked'. So come summer I  shall fill the yard with bright red geraniums in Swiss style - if I'm allowed of course that is ;)

Free at last

If you were to go up the steps and turn right a 100 years ago, you would have found the loos for the three cottages, I remember seeing this on the deeds.  Another bone of contention, though not really, is the raised platform under the wall on the right, theoretically I own a couple of yards of it but it was never registered as owned, so we all 'share' this space which was probably in its day small brick outhouses for cooking in at one time.

The family, or at least a couple of them occasionally sleep there overnight, and I expect this first year it will be used for family and friends coming to visit, it has become part of the communal 'pot'

Whilst spinning I have been listening to the monotonous computer voice reading Gilbert White's History of Selborne, a fascinating experience, means I can do two things at the same time, though the voice is pretty awful, at least I can check some of the 18th century words,  a water eft is nothing more than a newt, a daw is a jackdaw of course.  Apparently they nested in between the small interstices of the stones at Stonehenge.  Sadly although White is a keen ornithologist, the slaughter for specimens is rather appalling, when they shoot the one and only bird of a species the heart sinks (normally with fury), but hunting  and killing by all and sundry was in its heyday.  I came across the Waltham Blacks, which upon checking alluded to poachers of deer from Waltham, they blacked their faces whilst out poaching.  Another sad practice was to par the hooves of the young deer so that they wouldn't run away, fatten them up and then kill them.