Autumn Has Positively Arrived

Autumn has positively arrived and it bears gifts of conkers ( and not honkers as my blog so gracefully wants to put instead blessed is the art of predictive text )

I just popped out to collect some conkers they’re useful as spider repellent s or you can chuck them at spiders the size of aragog from Harry Potter.

Here’s one if the horses who lives in the field ( obviously) of the farm at the end of my road.

With Autumn you can hear me cry :

“ For I am Queen of the thermostat you will not hear me shiver !”

And I did at precisely 12 midnight turn on the heating like Cinderella would have done if she had been cold.I didn’t sleep very well last night either and had to come downstairs for an hour or so because insomnia is a tricky beast demanding attention.

But despite feeling like a tea drinking zombie this morning faced with the apocalypse of housework, I soldiered on tinkering a little with the burden of tidying.Then I ventured out to welcome Autumn here positively.It would have been rude of me not to return the favour of visiting Autumn in return.

Ever Met A Person You know On Holiday ?

Have you ever met a person you know on holiday and I don't mean your family that you're going with I mean unexpectedly even when you're thousands upon thousands of miles away from where you live . You think awwwh peace and quiet until you get a


"COOOOOEEEE oh hello I didn't know you were here as well ....."


Your heart may sink or you might or no bang there goes my quiet holiday !


This has happened to me not once but twice three times if you include my husband seeing someone he knew on a flight who waved from first class us as we did the first class walk of shame all the way down to economy class.


And then there was the time I and my family was smack bang in Washington at subway station called Wooley Park getting our subway tickets for that days adventure.I suddenly heard a very high pictured sound of a child


"MRS Toplis ... OOOOH it's Mrs Toplis "


And there thousands of miles away from home was a pupil from the school where I was a teaching assistant  , I was shocked as you go away for a holiday and end up seeing someone you know ! I thought yes you are perhaps likely to bump into someone you know in Spain perhaps or even Portugal but Washington DC and a Subway station at that.

National Trust Hanbury Hall

Gosh I had a look and it seems like it has been a whole week since I blogged and I thought I had better put this right , well since my amazing recipe last week I have been to a National Trust property which obviously is no surprise and it wasn't even at the weekend .It was on a Thursday so put that in your non smoking pipe it was full of and these are the words of my husband "the blue rinse brigade"
National Trust properties where there is danger and not just because you might get tripped up by a rough Wethers original on the floor left by the older generation but by the fact that their are Scone traps.I have noticed an increasing problem at National Trust properties in that they lay these traps you might just thinking oh it is just a harmless cream tea but ooh no it is a human venus fly trap and it is mortally dangerous.









I think this is my favourite object from Hanbury Hall ( I did leave it behind ! however tempting it was )

The Lament Of The Past

Lamenting is the past is something people do for example when I was catching the bus the other day into town and don't even get me started on bus journeys ! There was a gentleman lamenting about eh past


"When I was younger all this was fields "


He continued on with "Don't you wish you could go back to the past ?"


And the lady he was having the conversation with said "You mean when you had to chisel of the ice of the window in the bathroom or go to the toilet at the bottom of the garden !"

To which he replied "You had a garden ?! you were lucky , we just had a strip concrete "


( It did very much sound like a Monty Python sketch "


"Wouldn't it be nice he said to go back to the past but with modern plumping " he said


It is both the good times and the bad that we hang to those times with perhaps something in those bad times that made it all the more bearable in order to survive.I myself didn't have the easiest of childhoods especially when my parents divorced and there wasn't much food in the house and I had at times had to eat the cats coley! But I loved my cat who was called Boots and that is what made those very tough and tumultuous times easier to get through.


Cats are very useful like that and my current cat is a great sort of comfort to me now when I have been through stressful times of late.

The Glory Of The Rose

Though you're weary and faded

Your glory isn't gone

The colour of your beauty survives

It falls like an autumn

Your head once held high tilts a little now

Summer days just a memory when the gently breeze thrilled you

You surpassed them all

Surviving the elements

You are the Queen of all you survey