Thistledown and Ice Cream

 Schools are finished for the long summer holiday so I expected the weather to turn wet and horrible this weekend. And sure enough,  thunderstorms are forecast for Monday and showers all next week - I'll get those cards made that were on yesterdays post! Thank you for the comments about them and to the many comments on my post about the Commonwealth war graves. Please go back and read them from around the world if you didn't see them all.

So what's been happening this week (After tennis) promised not to mention it again so it's whispered in small letters.

Last Monday was quite breezy and all day the garden was filled with thistledown and as it was hot doors and windows were open so very  soon there was nearly as many inside. The hedges, shrubs and cobwebs  caught so many and indoors they also found all the cobwebs that I miss - like under the wood-burner!

Here are a few caught on the cobwebs on the whirly washing line

On Tuesday a butterfly that hadn't visited so far this summer popped in. A lovely Comma and then  there was rain in the evening - not a lot but every little helps.

 

Great British Sewing Bee is back on TV. I watch in envy at what they can whip up in 30 minutes - it would take me that long to set up the thread!

On Wednesday I had the last of six in the arthritis management and exercise course. My knee is definitely feeling less painful - especially at night - but stairs will still be a problem - if I had any to use here. Starting in six weeks time I'm going to do another more general exercise thing for another six week course called something like 'move and thrive?' Free again and run by the same young physio fella and same exercises as the eight we've been doing but with a few extras thrown in - cycle and treadmill. I forgot to ask how long it lasts each time - much less than an hour I hope - not sure how I'll get on either. 

Friends from Essex visited on Thursday for a couple of hours. I don't see them as often as when Col was alive and we were at the smallholding- we had a good catch up as they hadn't been up since November.

Friday I decided on a trip down to the sea before the weather changes- hadn't been this year at all. I underestimated just how hot it was so after a walk along the prom - the big wheel was shut - I'm still waiting to go on it sometime, and  a whippy ice cream  I went into town where it was even hotter and popped into the huge second-hand bookshop where I found an old Nevil Shute book.

Then home again through the horrible roadworks over the Orwell Bridge - which have been holding people up for weeks.

No plans to go to Felixstowe again this year - it's not worth the hassle. The A14 has become a real problem - as busy as any motorway but only two lanes and numerous junctions, frequent accidents and incidents.

At home the garden was once again full of thistledown - I reckon it's coming from the huge field down the road that's going to be a building site sometime next year - unless the company that own it sell it on again. I know of two new new housing estates nearby where building work has stopped -money problems with both is supposedly the reason. The government say how many houses are needed and have to be built but when 100s are built at the same time there's not enough people to buy them! 

Whoop Whoop, new series of Karen Pirie starts on ITV Sunday evening!  based on a book by Val McDermid (I've never been able to get into her books for some reason) . Better re-watch the first series as it was on in 2022 which seems an age ago now.

Back Next Week

Too Windy?

 I wanted to show you wonderful views of Felixstowe from the top of this temporary structure. 

I checked the forecast for a calm day and checked the wheel's opening times and tootled off down the A140 and the A14.

But when I got down to the sea front the big wheel was closed even though everywhere was calm and the sea was flat.

So I went up the town and round the charity shops and the big second-hand bookshop instead, thinking perhaps it would be working later in the day.

But no luck - still no-one there and no signs of movement.

I came home via Dunelm in Ipswich and picked up a nice big cosy throw for my new sofa and two new cushion covers to go with the cushions already found at car-boot sales and the ones that come with the sofa.

The wheel is supposed to be open through October before it's dismantled and taken away but if it was closed on a calm day I'm not sure it's worth another trip.

Gutted that I only heard about it a couple of weeks ago or I would have been there earlier - in the queue on the first day!

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Felixstowe St John the Baptist or St Andrews?

St Johns or St Andrews - a very good question.

Before I went to the church I called in to see my cousin and her husband who have recently moved here. "Which Church are you going to" asked my cousin. " The one in the town" I said and I THOUGHT I knew exactly where I was going "How many are there?" I asked and A told me of the one just along the road from their home and the one just off the main shopping street. "I'm sure it's the one nearest the town" I said and went and parked in the town centre car park and looked at the book

and found I should have been at the church near their home. DUH! In my defence  - the page of the book about St Johns didn't have a picture of the exterior and also didn't have the road name BUT I should have looked at the book earlier in the day!

Anyway this is St John the Baptist in Orwell Road and not St Andrews ( which is a strange concrete building) in St Andrews Rd.

Not an old flint church like so many I've visited but an early 20th century brick  church built for the expanding population of Suffolk's main seaside town. The spire soars 130 feet above the town.

Lovely and warm  inside............there was a notice saying the heating was on so Please Shut the Door.
The lights were switched on around the choir stalls and and Altar but the rest of the church was very dark

and my photos are dreadfully poor. Much better photos on the Suffolk Churches website HERE   where there are close up photos of all the Saints featured in the stained glass windows on both sides of the church.

The reason this church has a page in the 100 treasures book is because whereas many churches have 14  Stations of the Cross around the church, St John has 16. They are all simply etched onto slate and fixed to the pillars

Some are much smaller

Here's some more Saints

The highly decorated carved  Font cover made by an Ipswich craftsman in 1912

I think this church should feature in the book as the only Suffolk Church to be mentioned in a poem by John Betjeman

Felixstowe, or The Last of Her Order.

With one consuming roar along the shingle
The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down
To where its backwash and the next wave mingle,
A mounting arch of water weedy-brown
Against the tide the off-shore breezes blow.
Oh wind and water, this is Felixstowe.

In winter when the sea winds chill and shriller
Than those of summer, all their cold unload
Full on the gimcrack attic of the villa
Where I am lodging off the Orwell Road,
I put my final shilling in the meter
And only make my loneliness completer.

In eighteen ninety-four when we were founded,
Counting our Reverend Mother we were six,
How full of hope we were and prayer-surrounded
"The Little Sisters of the Hanging Pyx".
We built our orphanage. We built our school.
Now only I am left to keep the rule.

Here in the gardens of the Spa Pavillion
Warm in the whisper of the summer sea,
The cushioned scabious, a deep vermillion,
With white pins stuck in it, looks up at me
A sun-lit kingdom touched by butterflies
And so my memory of the winter dies.

Across the grass the poplar shades grow longer
And louder clang the waves along the coast.
The band packs up. The evening breeze is stronger
And all the world goes home to tea and toast.
I hurry past a cakeshop's tempting scones
Bound for the red brick twilight of St.John's.

"Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising"
Here where the white light burns with steady glow
Safe from the vain world's silly sympathising,
Safe with the love I was born to know,
Safe from the surging of the lonely sea
My heart finds rest, my heart finds rest in Thee

*****************************************

I'd planned to go around the charity shops in Felixstowe - There are Lots - but the weather was freezing so I only did a few and found nothing. I also planned to go in the Bookshop and put my name down for a brochure about the Book Festival held in the town at the end of June every year (they sponsor the festival) but they were closed for the week for holidays. I'd already asked my cousin to look out for a brochure for me nearer the time, so hopefully she will spot one for me. Last year I was able to pick one up at the Tourist Information Centre in Stowmarket but funding for TICs has been cut and like most of the others in Suffolk the Stow one closed at Christmas.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Yesterday and the Sunday Before

Stupid wet weather each morning meant  No car boot sales on Easter Saturday or Sunday. The forecast for today is dire too. We plan to go through the books-under-the-stairs  Again as Ziffit are doing a 15% extra for any they want to buy.

 We went down to Felixstowe  yesterday morning to check the beach hut  and to bring home things we didn't want included in the sale.........Yes we decided to sell, it's just too much expense because of the council putting up ground rent each year plus  we are further away and probably won't use it much now we have a quiet garden to sit out in.
We opened up the hut and a piece of paper fell out......it had been wedged in the top of the door. Someone who had just moved to Felixstowe was looking to buy a hut, so we rang the phone number and they came straight down and agreed to buy it! Our son  will be upset that we've sold, because he loved going down there but the money we've sold it for will keep us for a whole year and there is no way to justify £700 annual ground rent (up from £500 when we first had it) and another £100 insurance for just a dozen days of use. And they've also increased the car parking fee from £3.50 a day to £4.10..........rising costs are just never ending.
So we just have to sort out paperwork when the council offices open again after Easter,hand over the keys and get the money! It's sad but it served it's purpose when we were in the small bungalow and for Col recovering first time round.

We did get to the local car boot on the Sunday before last, we were early and there weren't many there but I found this table and two chairs  for £10.

When Col put a bit of fence up last year to protect part of the patio from the prevailing wind, I said we needed a table and chairs and looked all last year for second-hand without finding anything.
So my purse was opened very quickly when the seller said how much she wanted for these. They've had a wash down and just need a bit of a spray on some of the joints with the rust-cover paint and then some sunshine and warmth...........soon.......please.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Empty Beaches

We went down to the beach hut on Friday to check and oil the padlocks and to bring home anything that might get damp - like the coffee in a jar.
It was a beautiful morning, the sea was flat calm.

Col sat out for 10 minutes while we had a coffee and  I tidied up and collected up what had to go home

 Just a few dog walkers about. One lady had 4 golden retrievers - blimey!

We've been able to put off selling the beach hut for a year as the council had so much opposition to their plans to alter fees that they've "re-considered" and have decided against huge increases in ground rent - for now anyway. They wanted people to take on long term licences, paying up front for several years at a time but have given up that idea. They also planned 10% increases every year for 10 years but have put off that plan for a while too. They still intend to charge people buying a hut a £300 fee "administration" charge rather than the £30 we paid in 2016.
We didn't really make the most of the hut this summer so will still have to think about things this time next year.

As we locked up again the sun disappeared behind some clouds and the temperature dropped by about 10 degrees. We went into town and toured the charity shops finding.........Nothing.

Then into Ipswich to pick up Col's tablets from hospital, Asda for shopping and home.

When we drove home the water company were on the corner near the house repairing a leak that Colin noticed on Thursday  and rang in to report. Thank goodness they soon got that done as they were really losing a lot of water, it was  pouring out of the verge and flooding right across the road.


Back Soon
Sue

Last Week Without Hospital Visits

We visited gorgeous granddaughter.......................... and her mummy.

and went to a car boot sale of course!

(Basket of Body Shop stuff £1.50,Christmas cake cases 50p, Kilner spice/diffuser bags 50p, jar 50p)

Then down to Felixstowe and the beach hut, surprisingly quiet there for a Saturday in August

"Dirty British Coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack" probably not, but it was anchored there all day

 Mummy(or daddy) and baby Herring  Gull

 Col gave the funny little shed a coat of wood preserver so it can go to youngest's home.

(That blob must be the sun reflecting on a smudge on the lens)

Co put up the fence as previously mentioned and made a cut flower bed..........details tomorrow.

And he went and saw some friends from 'up north' who used to stay on our campsite and were visiting Suffolk

We had an unexpected visit from some other friends who used to live in the village near the smallholding but now live on the south coast.

I made bread, bread rolls and cakes and cooked from scratch. Did some cleaning and lots of reading.

Back to normal this week - two hospital appointments.



Did you watch the Fake or Fortune programme on TV last night where they were authenticating a painting by John  Constable? Well here's a thing you didn't know - I (and about 500 other people at Stowmarket Grammar School in the 1960's) were taught art for a while by John Constable's Great Great (not sure how many greats) Grandson also called John, I think it was in between two other art teachers. This is his obituary it says 

In 1964 he completed his National Diploma and began teaching at schools in Suffolk, as well as at Ipswich School of Art.
................... and I can't remember much about him except he smelled really strongly of cigarettes!

Returning Forthwith
Sue

First of The Year

Not content with painting at home we went to the beach hut and gave the front of it a couple of coats of  wood protection in a nice shade of blue/green. It really needed doing.

What with moving, illness, cold weather it was our first trip there this year. Had to have the first of these of course!

Thank you for all the comments about the photos yesterday, there are more to share on future posts - you have been warned!

Back Soon

Sue