Old Favourites!

This is my favourite view of our place, tucked into a Scottish hillside.

This weekend is all about comfort for me. I made comforting foods for my family to eat, onion soup and lasagne. I served the food up on the most robust plates ever made, Corelle by Corning. The plates were wedding presents when The Man of the Place and I were married over 17 years ago. Sure there are a few that are showing signs of wear, but there are few broken. The plates lived through a lively family with kids who resented having to wash the dishes. Sometimes the dishes took the brunt of their resentment. Lesser plates are no longer in service. Though the pattern has dimmed over time, the Corelle plates are still plugging away. I think the pattern is no longer available so I can't buy the few items to replace the ones that did manage to break, but there are still plenty of plates to set the table, plus occasional guests.

We have had a rare, dry weekend. My family and I have been enjoying the fact that there is less mud in our lives these days. When the rain starts again tomorrow - naturally we can't have more than three dry days together, I won't be inundated with mud at the back door because the finishing layer of gravel is down. I wish we had done this YEARS ago! It looks so much better around here and (forgive me for repeating myself) there is LESS MUD!

New Gravel!

We've had a LOT of rain. It is official. This is the wettest year since records began. There has been flooding in the area as well. Our house is on a hill so we are in no danger of rising water but that doesn't mean that the ground hasn't been completely saturated!

The Man of the Place and I were sick to the back teeth of rain and mud. We can't stop the rain, but perhaps we can manage the mud a bit better. The drive and yard are getting new gravel.

First the ancient and crumbling concrete was scraped up and hauled away. Bits of the old cobbled yard, from the days when Whitelees Cottage used to be the location of a lumber mill (between the wars) Then a new sub-base of scrapings from our local quarry was dumped and leveled. Later on we will get nice finished gravel to make it all look lovelier.

Meanwhile in the house, the pets compete for the best spot in front of the fire.Polly has won this round.

I love having friends that own heavy machinery. Stuart has a JCB, Innes has a heavy duty trailer. Gamekeeper Mike doesn't own any heavy machinery that I know of, but he did bring me a couple brace of pheasants that were shot yesterday. I couldn't take Polly out for a walk yesterday as there was a pheasant shoot on. This little gift makes up for it!!

As I write this, our cat Julio is out in the tunnel, yowling at the pheasants. I think he wants to eat them . . . . sorry Julio.

Bad Weather and a Bad Game

I bet you guys just thought I was being overly sensitive about the weather. We didn't have very good weather last summer. The bad weather continued through the autumn and winter. I remember complaining about it. Spring was a little better and my spirits started to lift. I was hoping that this summer would be good. Sadly my hope dripped away from me as each gray, damp dawn rose. Well it turns out that this has been the wettest August since about 1914! The MET office has confirmed it. We've had about 96 hours of sunshine in total this month. That is it!

I've been wistful about the summers when it was nice here. We used our sunglasses, sunscreen and got to swim in local rivers. I haven't actually used my sunglasses since we've come back from our holiday last month. In fact, I don't think I know where they are now. . . . The only time I think it was half way decent was when we had a visit from Claude and Catherine.

If I had control over the weather, I would have certainly stopped Hurricane Gustav from hitting the beleaguered Caribbean and the relentless path this storm is making toward the southern Gulf States. Louisiana and Alabama have suffered enough! There is also massive flooding in the Indian state of Bihar where it is reported that 1.2 million people have been rendered homeless due to flooding. I'll repeat this, 1.2 million people homeless! If this were my planet to control I'd direct this unwanted and excess water to areas where it hasn't rained enough for life to continue. For instance vast chunks of New South Wales could do with a bit more rain.

The idea of selling Whitelees and using the proceedings to move to Skiathos has been flitting through my head lately. The idea popped into my brain again this afternoon as I sat with George at the Stadium of Light in the rain, watching our noble lads get the stuffing knocked out of them by Manchester City. The final score was Sunderland 0 - Manchester City 3. It was depressing. Loads of fans started to leave before the full time whistle. Shamefully this included George and myself. It was said on the radio that 10 minutes before the end of the game the swarms of the 39,000 fans starting to make their way home made the stadium looked as though there had been a bomb scare.

We won't up stakes and move to a warmer climate. Even though the Lonely Planet book of The Greek Islands states that Skiathos enjoys 300 days of sunshine a year, we'll be staying put. It wouldn't be practical to move at this point in our lives, but some days . . . . .

We won't be throwing out our season tickets for Sunderland either, but I hope that the team's performance picks up. If the lads keep playing (or not playing) like they did today, we'll be looking at relegation again.

The thing that we continue to have is hope. We hope that next summer there will only be an ordinary amount of rain and Sunderland will be doing so well that there will be talk of championships, trophies and games in Europe rather than relegation battles.

Myth Busted

A few comments on my last post from loyal (God bless ya) readers of my blog made me a bit concerned. I fear you guys might think that I have a beautiful, tidy and weed free garden. Really nothing could be further from the truth.

I had a few visitors here at the house in August. These were people who I've met through blogging and they stayed here at Whitelees and I was really quite anxious about their arrival. I knew that coming into the drive might have been a let down for them. I'm sure they thought, as I suspect other readers may think, that my garden is a glorious oasis of gardeny perfection. It ain't. It's a mess. I do try to keep up with it, but as I try to hold down a full time job, keep the house from sinking into chaos, maintain a few friendships and try to claw out a bit of time with my family, the garden is last on my list of priorities. Did that just sound like a list of excuses? I do LIKE the garden but I am easily distracted and disheartened by cruddy weather.

I know I do go on about the weather here in Scotland, but it has been very rainy for a second summer in a row. It has rained almost all of the month of August. I'm glad we got away for a few weeks in July. That seemed to be our quota of sun for the summer. The lawn is almost up to our knees, weeds have taken over the vegetable patch and . . . well see for yourselves. I present - the August recap video.
Other gardens near us seem to manage just fine . . . This is the second year in a row that things just haven't worked out for me and the garden. It started off so well, I was so full of enthusiasm as the days started to grow longer and warmer. But the rain started and apart from a week in July, it has never really let up.

What I'd like is a month or two of dry warm weather where I don't have to go out to work and I could get my teeth sunk into weeding, planting and organizing things. I have even thought about hiring somebody to come in, but that would involve money that we just don't have.

As it happend last year and again this year and we've had week after week of relenting rain, I sort of throw up my hands and start thinking about NEXT year. That's the thing. There is always the hope that there will be better weather in the future and I'll be much more able to get on top of things.

Well That Didn't Last Long!

Not long after yesterday's blog entry was sent out into the interweb, it started to rain. I had to dash out and pull all the laundry off the line. It started raining harder and the wind picked up. By the time Gordon and Louise arrived (with cake!) it was chucking it down and very unpleasant. I think it was cosmic retribution for me bragging about the lovely summer morning we were having.

We all had such a nice chat with those two. (Happy Birthday Louise!) We went outside for a bit so that they could admire the little bundles of fluff. It's amazing how quickly they grow in just three days!

Now it is Sunday afternoon and I don't think the rain has stopped since it started yesterday. It's cold too. We lit a fire in the fireplace last night to take the chill out of the air. As yesterday was the first day of summer I was loathe to turn the furnace back on. In addition to that, the cost of heating oil is so high! We thought that during the summer the cost of heating oil would go down as it has done in the past. We were going to take advantage of that and get the tank filled up but the price keeps going UP!

I've had it with worries. I am now going to focus on the week ahead. We are preparing to set off on our summer family holiday. We will be using a UK based holiday company that we've used many many times before, Matthews Holidays.

Our first holiday in France was years ago when all three boys were still at home and young enough to have no say in whether or not they came on the family holiday. I was still a stay at home mother and our household budget was Tight. I found a last minute, off peak bargain off teletext with this company.

We went to Brittany for two weeks in early September and stayed in one of their static caravans. I must say that even though it was a bargain we all had a really good time. The weather in that part of France in September is dry, sunny and not too hot. Most of the tourists have gone back to their schools and work desks by then and the crowds of summer are just a dimming memory. We had a really good time and it didn't cripple our finances. We kept going back there for years.

In the past couple of years we've found that we can go a bit further, spending the same amount of money. One year I compared the prices for holidays in Greece and it turned out that it would actually be less expensive to fly to the Greek islands. So we went to the lovely island of Skiathos for a couple of years.

As much as I loved our holidays in Skiathos and the holidays to Egypt, I found I missed going to France. This year we're going back. This time however we're are going to go further south than we've ever been before. We're headed to the Mediterranean coast not far from the Spanish border. I'm really excited. The Man of the Place and I have been researching the dive laws in France and getting all the documentation we might need to dive in this corner of Europe. In addition to bringing along our qualifications, we need to have a current medical certificate signed by a doctor. We also may or may not need some passport style photographs. We'll just get some done at the local supermarket photo booth. Aerial photo of Torreilles Plage. Photo of the beach with the foot hills of the Pyrenees in the background.

This is where we will be for two weeks.

In addition to all this we are also taking neighbour boy Gordon with us. Gordon and George are eight weeks apart in age and have very different personalities. Despite or because of this, they've always been very good friends. We're quite fond of Gordon and know that he'll be good company for all of us during this holiday and I think he'll have a good time.In my excitement I bought a sunhat when I booked the holiday. This will protect me from the harsh Mediterranean sun. It is a bit garish, but where else can you wear a hat like this if not in the South of France when one is on ones holidays! It may have the added bonus of embarrassing my family.