This week has seen more of the same as last week. Clearing
up, clearing out and getting rid of! Again, various trips to second hand shops
etc but at a slower pace. Carol had also advertised a few goods on the internet
and by putting up notices in the supermarkets and so on, which brought a steady
response, if a bit strange in some cases. One person phoned to say that he was
interested in a double bed and mattress and could he come and have a look at it
at five o’clock, after work. When he arrived, he was riding a bicycle, which
caused a bit of a laugh as he doesn’t own a car. However he thought he had a
friend who could help with transport, so off he pedalled to find this friend.
While he was away, we decided that if the friend was not available, we could
load the bed and mattress, as well as a chest of drawers and a stool which he
had also bought, into Carol’s trailer and deliver it to him, for a small fee.
Ker-ching! In the end, friend was not available so this morning we loaded up
his purchases and took them to his house. It was only about two miles (we’re in
England now!) away, but what a pretty drive and a pretty day to match. It was
sunny and blue-sky-ed with little puffs of white clouds here and there, but an
icy breeze blowing. A good day to be inside the car and not on a bicycle.
Another bed went to a lady who really didn’t know what she
really wanted. First she phoned to find out the exact size, although it was a
standard double bed and had been advertised as such. Then she phoned again to
find out if it had storage drawers underneath, which it hadn’t. Then she phoned
again to ask us to measure the height from the floor to the bed, in order to be
able to put storage boxes in underneath it and then finally she phoned again to
ask if she could come and see it the same evening. She came, and strangely
enough, it was exactly what she had been looking for! So another piece left the
garage. As did a washing machine and a dish-washer and numerous ‘smalls’. We
managed to find someone to take three large boxes of ancient books, who then
found someone else who was really interested in seeing them, and the ‘someone’
else knew yet another person who would ‘just love to get his hands on’ a selected
few of them. Great! Some more satisfied customers and more room in the garage.
So having made all this marvelous space in the garage, and
while we still had the trailer attached to the car, we swung by the storage
unit that had been rented to accommodate all the extra furniture, and huffed
and puffed until we had the three pieces of a bedroom wardrobe and dressing table
set all neatly packed into the trailer and took it home where we huffed and
puffed it all out again and into the space we had cleared. So now the garage is
nearly full again!
However, it wasn’t all work this week. On Tuesday, Carol and
I took the afternoon off and went to a demonstration and workshop of floral
art. Not really my scene, I thought, but it turned out to be quite fascinating.
The demonstrator did two arrangements, especially for Autumn, using only leaves
which are available now. I was amazed to see just how vibrant an arrangement
one can make using only foliage. Very clever indeed. Then, all the ladies who
had brought materials with them started to do their own versions of what they
had just seen. Time passed very pleasantly and then it was tea and biscuits and
then home. The ladies were all very friendly and eager to show off what they
had learned and some lovely arrangements left the building that evening.
On Thursday we did a round of local carpet shops to look for
some carpet tiles to finish the carpets in our house, but finally gave up. There
are so few shops that stock them and nothing that we saw was anything like the
ones we put down initially. The Carol surprised us by taking us to a birthday
lunch for Neels whose birthday was the following day, at the wonderful Midland
Hotel in Fleetwood. It is housed in a grand old Art Nouveau building, with the
hotel name picked out in quite small letters above the front doors. All very
understated. We were not eating in the dining room as that would have broken
the bank, but instead we had a lovely
meal in what is known as the Rotunda Bar – a circular bar counter with tables
arranged all around with huge windows looking out on to the sea. It looks out
on to Morecombe Bay which is where, some years a ago a number of mussel pickers
were drowned when the tide came in.. I had always sort of wondered at this
story – wondered why they didn’t just run for the shore when the sea started to
come up, but now I understand. There are little hills and valleys all over the
bed of the bay, to say nothing of the sinking sands, and the tide spreads over
the huge flat area unbelievably fast, swirling around both sides of little
islands of sand until each is cut off and then sweeping over the top at a great
rate. It is frightening just to watch and must be terrifying to be caught out
there as the tide rises.
We must have become quite cold-hearted over the years as the
thought of the poor mussel-pickres didn’t spoil our appetites at all and when
we eventually rolled out of the hotel some time later we couldn’t have eaten
another thing! Sadly we had to say ‘No’ to 'Afternoon Tea on the Verandah' at
only £17.50 a head! That is nearly R300 per person for a cup of tea and few
cakes or sandwiches1 We were very glad to walk away from that.
On Saturday evening we went to a fund-raising event at the
Arts Centre, here in Garstange, in the form of a Lancashire and Yorkshire variety concert. The main
performers were the Garstang Ukulele Group of which Carol is a member, and they
opened and closed the show with some rousing renderings of ‘local’ songs. I say
‘local’ because some of the connections
to either Yorkshire or Lancashire were a bit vague to say the least. In between
that we had different people reciting humorous verse, some in Lancashire
idiom; a man who was a primary school pupil when the building was a school, who
sang the school song for us, now probably defunct as is the school; an ex-headmistress who read us an hilarious account of a trip to Paris in a ‘charabanc’
and all the high junks everyone got up to; there was a most amusing magician
who had a mass of corny jokes to go with his magic and the man who kept the whole show moving
was dressed as the Hall Caretaker and managed to keep everyone in stitches as he
deftly cleared away props and brought in others. The actual opening of the show
was an announcement by the Garstang Town Crier, preceded by ringing a large brass
bell three times and shouting ‘Oh – Yeah! Oh Yeah! Oh Yeah!’. She looked very grand in her official garb of black skirt and boots, white blouse with a ruffle
at the neck, red waistcoat and a black tricorn hat. She presides at all sorts
of functions and certainly added a touch of glamour to the evening.
Included in the cost of the ticket was a meal of Lancashire Hot-pot,
which can be served with either red cabbage or beetroot, traditionally. We got
ours with beetroot and it was delicious. With about 70 to 80 people in a
relatively small hall, all breathing, talking, laughing, moving about and
eating hot food, the place warmed up nicely so it was a real shock to go
outside again into the chilly breeze. I do think Autumn has arrived.
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