Catch up 3 Phones and flowers

On Wednesday throughout the summer Martin plays in a golf competition which means that een if it is his day off we can never go out far. The wednesday of his holiday was no exception, but I was surprised when he said he wanted a trip into Canterbury.

Turns out he wanted to go into the 3G shop to find out if his phone contract was ready for an upgrade. It was, and not only that they could give him a discount on his contract if he took out a second hand set for me.

Now upgrading me has always been a problem because I have always been on PAYG and typically last August I put £10 on it, I still have £3 on it!! Yeah I admit, I am billy-nomates. But I really did want to join the smartphone set and it wasnt hard to pursuade me that £25 a month for 2 Samsung galaxy mini's with god alone knows how many free minutes, texts and internet access was worth it.

Of course with Martin being computer illiterate and my last upgrade being just after the start of the millenium, using them was always going to be a steep learning curve, but Laura came over and got us started, and we have been playing with our new toys eversince.

The carpets were put down on thursday, I cant get over how quick the guys were, two carpets down in under an hour and a half!

Kelly's fish tank had arrived and needed transporting to her house, but with the riots at the weekend (did I mention them, well its all over the web. The little row of shops a the end of Kelly's road was torched) Olli who is in charge of co-ordinating Sainsbury's emergency peoples was on nights making it difficult to pick a day to take it up. However he had quickly been changed back to days when they discovered how much they missed his brilliance on days and we were invited up for dinner on Friday.

Since Kelly didnt get home until 7 we decided to take in a visit to RHS Wisley for the day and then back track to Croydon afterwards. It had taken us the best part of the the morning to make all these decisions, and to pack a picnic (we remembered from Harlow Carr just how hard getting food and drink in their gardens was) and to get there.

It was so worth it though. As you walk in, you are greeted to a wonderfully preserved Tudor house (used as offices now) and a beautiful formal water feature with borders stuffed to the brim with summer flowers.



The place is huge, we picniced on the huge lawn, and then we wandered around all the various sections for 5 and a half hours and still only saw a portion of each part of the garden. There was a large proportion of mums pushing strollers visiting the gardens, and I have to say that considering the problems at the weekend with unruly children and teens terrorising the country, it restored our faith to see just how brilliantly well behaved every single child in the park was. The lake was full of ghost carp and huge golfish. I have seen big kio carp before but its the first time ever I have seen them actually attacking the ducks to get to the food.




The greenhouse was vast and housed a temperate zone, a dry zone and my favourites, a large variety of hibiscous.


Then there was the rockery garden, the rose garden that extended for as far as the eye coould see, the veggie garden (we whipped round that quick as it looked like rain) the alphine greenhouses ..... the list goes on and on.





Finally exhausted with our little leggies unable to walk anymore, we braved the M25 in rush hour back to Kelly's for our dinner.

She had decided on a takeaway dinner from the local harvester, and the good news was that Ollie was going to be home in time to join us. Our plans were foiled though when the Harvester staff informed us they were not doing take-outs as they didnt have any take-out boxes!! Poor Kez had to scrabble about in the fridge and make us a delish meal from nothing. Good ol' Kezzy!

And she was pleased with her fish tank, we were pleased with our day out!!

Catch up 2, A day trip to spend money.

Brighton beach

I spent yesterday giving the hall and stairs a coat of paint. This is not an easy task for a 5ft nothing person, and there is still a small patch where the full drop on the staircase is that will need Martin's longer arms and legs to reach, but I am pleased with the results. I slightly lighter shade (almond white instead of peach white) makes it brighter and a darn sight more clean looking (it was last painted in 2005)

So back to my blogging catch up.

On the second week of Martin's holiday I had thought we could throw the list of jobs aside and go out for days, but before I knew it, I was booked to accompany Finley and Laura on their first visit to the Healthvisitor's clinic, we needed to stay in for a delivery of a fish tank (for Kelly's birthday present from Ollie) and we had another day to stay in when the carpets were to be fitted. Adding in the afternoon of golf that Martin regularly plays on Wednesday afternoons through the summer it didnt leave that much time for long days out. I had asked to go to Brighton though, because even though its only an hour and three quarters journey away I had never actually been. I lie, I had been once with Mum and Dad, but he had been unable to find a parking place so he had turned round and come home again.

Veiw of Brighton pier as we went to park

We didnt set out that early on the Monday morning so it was getting on for mid day by the time we arrived at the sea front. We think we might have made a mistake in our choice of parking because we didnt discover until we got into the multistory that they were charging £2.50 an hour and that the car park belonged to a hotel (which was probably why they were able to charge so much) but we were already in so would have had to pay the first hour even if we had driven straight out. It was close to the Pier and the Lanes though.

Its been a while since we had been out doing the day at the beach thing, you kind of take it for granted when the sea front is 3 mins walk from your front door, but we were stunned by the price of ice-creams (£1.85 for a cone) doughnuts (£12.50 for 12) and didnt even go there with the prices of candy floss, chips, and other beachy fare.

Entrance to the pier

The walk along the pier was lovely but soooo expensive if you wanted to eat or go on any rides. I dont know how families with children manage?

Martin watching the rides

Fish and chips eaten in the fish restaurant was £9.50 each so we walked back down the pier and crossed the road to Harry Ramsdens.

Fed up with the wind, we took our fish meal across to the little park and sat on the grass watching the dolphin water fountain and ate while fending off sea gulls. We enjoyed that, it was quite peaceful and gave us time to collect our thoughts and decide where to go next.

Dolphin waterfall, very refreshing if you get caught downwind in the spray.

We walked up to Brighton Palace, and then all round it because there is no gate in at the front.

In front of Brighton Palace

It has a really nice garden if you ignore the drunks hidden in the bushes, but there was nothing to tell us either the price of entering the Palace or what we were likely to see if we went in. We didnt bother with the inside and just enjoyed the architecture from the outside.

I had downloaded a tour of the Lanes at home but had left it in the car. It was a document produced by the Tourist Information so we went in there next to grab another copy. I was stunned when they charged us 50p for it, when it had been a free download. Mmm expensive paper and printing ink I suspect. Anyway we set off to follow the pathway that was supposed to show us the best of the places in the Lanes area.

I was expecting lots of second hand, antique and shabby chic crafty type shops. I was so disappointed. What we got, between all the coffee shops and cafes was shop after shop after shop of jewelery shops. I think we pasted only 1 crafty type shop and I also have to say I suspect the TI route took us away from the shops and concentrated more on the arcitecture of some pretty poorly designed buildings.

We had had enough. We concluded that we didnt really like Brighton much, it was expensive, the beach wasnt up to much and it wasnt even that interesting. We redeemed our car (£7.50 in fees by now), looked at the sorry state of our wallets, and headed off to take the long coast road route home.

As we were going along we managed to get behind an open top tour bus. Martin was amused by the advert on the back of it considering its destination, and thought hop on, hop off wasnt really a good choice of slogan.



I had never been to Beachyhead so we followed the bus as it took its detour. It was beautiful countryside and I really would have loved to go see the cliffs (even though the heights terrify me, but I am guessing that Sussex council must think they need to fleece every visitor for as much as they can because once again they charged a high toll just to park in a layby!!!

The detour took over an hour, and with the coast route being so long it took us nearly 4 hours to get home. We did have a good day out but have come to the conclusion it is no wonder most people go off to Spain and such for their holidays. This country is just far too expensive to enjoy.

3 weeks worth to catch up - part 1

I have a long list of craft stuff I want to share, but I am going to do that in a seperate post as I need to dredge my memory first to get down all the things we have been up to in the last few weeks.

Aside from the big news of our Finley's arrival the other important thing that has happened is that my long term assignment as Children's centre teacher may have come to an end or at the very least my hours will be cut from 4 days to 2.5 days a week. Although I hated the travelling I did enjoy many aspects of the job and the people I worked with are amongst the best. I wont know until September if I still have hours but fingers crossed that I do.

Anyway summer holidays are in full swing now and jobs are not something I am thinking of until term starts. As usual with most teachers, the first week of my summer was spent doing all the house type stuff I have not been able to do while working. The house was unbelievably dirty so a solid week of washing down shelves, sorting out drawers, cutting down overgrown shrubs in the garden, ensued (as well as a couple of visits to see my grandson.)

For the past two weeks Martin has been on his annual summer leave too. We hadnt planned to go away this year as I wanted to stay close for Laura in her early weeks as a new mum, not that there has been any need as she is being a terrific mummy and is coping well.

So we decided on the spur of the moment because the weather was so lovely we starting with a BBQ for our new addition and parents, Of course this meant we had to rush out to find BBQ food and although we had fancied fish, neither Morrisons, Tesco or even Whitstable harbour had any sardines left, so it was back to the old staples of sausages, burgers and chicken.

Finley watches the bbq, one day this will be his job!

Not impressed he takes a while to settle (and a lot of cuddles into the bargin, result for nan!)

There was a whole long list of little jobs that Martin needed to do during his hols, and our first task was a trip to Ikea to buy a cot and other goodies to finish some of these jobs. Martin doesnt mind too much as he gets to have the cheapo Ikea breakfast. We spent a fair amount of money on a new cot and mattress for the nursery, cushions, lights and other bits and pieces. I wasnt impressed that the woman in the fabric department was getting an earbashing as we walked through. Turns out she had been letting the department run down and was not very well stocked up. This meant I could not get the fabric I needed to finish off the conservatory as I needed matching plain stuff to cover the cushions with.

We finished the day off in TGI Friday, stuffing ourselves silly with the two course meal deal. I munched my way through a whole huge rib much to Martin's surprise. We then came home and put the nursery together. Photo's to come when I do my crafting post.

Our next outing inbetween doing jobs on the list was to go out and order new carpets for both the lounge and our bedroom, as both of them were filthy and on the verge of falling to bits. Martin was given the job of measuring up while I searched on the interwebby for best places to go. Sure there was a reasonable choice of shops at Westward Cross for carpet buying, we arrived, only for us to discover Martin had made a mistake in writing down his measurements. I wasnt prepared to run the risk of getting the wrong size of carpet as this could be an expensive mistake. Not only that we could only find one of the shops listed on the www. so we soon returned home to do some remeasuring.

On our second attempt we stopped off to visit Laura and Finley, and to find out where they bought their carpets from. Really fed up with the whole adventure we decided to just look around Hernebay to see what was on offer there. On only our second shop we found just what we wanted, at a price we were willing to spend, and not only that fitting was free. A really lovely man served us, and pretty soon we were all set for new carpets to be laid the following Thursday.

Wayne and Finley

I was a bit concerned that now Wayne's paternaty leave had finished, Laura wasnt getting out and about so we offered to take her and little Finley out with us to buy restocks for my fish pond, the local seagull contingent having taken most of mine for their lunch boxes. Dad had recommended a place near Sandwich so off we set. I have to say Finn wasnt that fussed, sleeping through all the sights, which in a way was a good thing. This fish centre was so run down since the last time we had visited (admittedly when the girls were a lot younger) that I couldnt believe it was the same place. What had been a whole garden of beautifully stocked ponds to wander around and enjoy was now reduced to 3 ponds, one so overgrown you could only see a small part of it, and the other two so green and full of terrapins that it was acutally unpleasant to walk around them. We also saw some lemurs locked int a shed (Martin said they could get out round the other side but I wasnt convinced) and I am sure they really needed reporting for the conditions the animals were being kept. Not only that they didnt have any fish!

Glad to get away we instead drove into Sandwich, parked up the car and took Finley for his first cup of tea and sandwich in a cafe. He was so good, and even though it was feeding time, he didnt make too much of a fuss, and certainly didnt upset any of the other customers.

Finley enjoys his first cafe lunch.

We later sat in the park eating ice cream one handed as Laura finished feeding Finley.

Watching the world go by from the buggy (Sandwich park at 23 days old)

Finley firsts

First cuddle with Aunty Kelly

First hand hold with nana. Tiny tiny fingers.

3 generations together.

Photos all taken in Finley's first week with us all.

Welcome baby Finley

The most important catch up and news to go on my blog. The arrival of my very first grandson, and congratulations to Wayne and Laura.

WELCOME LITTLE BABY FINLEY -
15/7/2011
8pm
7lbs 3 oz

I had a phone call from Wayne at around half 4 on Thursday to say that Laura had gone into labour. Reading between the lines I kinda guessed she wanted me to be there so I hopped in the car down to Ramsgate, I stayed until gone 8 pm, and all the time Laura was having contractions every three minutes, so I was more than expecting a night time phone call to say the baby had been born.

No, we had an undisturbed nights sleep so at work the next morning I was a bit aggitated that I hadn't heard anything. Finally the nursery manager persuaded me to text Wayne and find out if there was any news. He immediately texted back to say they were only just taking her into the labour ward.

On tender hooks all morning, I drove the mum's at the toddler group crazy pacing round with my mobile in hand, and when a text came through just before 12am a collective breath was held as they all waited to find out what she had had, and how the new mum was. Out of luck, it was only a progress report and she was still in labour

Obviously it was going to be a long haul. Another update from from Wayne around 4 oclock, still not ready to arrive yet.

Finally at 8.10 pm Friday night, the text we had all been waiting for, after around 32 hours labour Laura had finally given birth to a little boy.

I knew visiting wasnt until 4 oclock on the Saturday and I knew Laura had no intentions of staying in, so I held my patience to meet the little lad sometime in the afternoon. Yet again circumstances dictated different. A conversation with Wayne and it seemed our new youngster was being a tad fussy as a feeder and until he had had a full meal the hospital were not discharging him, so instead another phone call and I was off to Ramesgate again to finally meet the new addition to the family. As I parked up I realised I was driving virtually on empty. Those who know me, know I dont do petrol so this was going to proove a bit of a problem, but I was too excited to worry about that.

Laura looked amazing for someone who had just been through such a long labour, but having established that she was fine it was time for a hug with the babe. She was trying to feed him, but although he latched on fine, he just refused to suck. Mmmm, I remember a similar problem with a small one of mine!!!

Laura and Finley both looking amazing after their ordeal.

Eventually with the use of some expressed milk, some formula and both a cup and a bottle plus a student nurse, we managed to top up the child's reserves, and then Laura was desperate to go home. Finally, first feed

The hospital on the other hand had other ideas, they said they couldn't stop her from discharging but they were not happy that he hadnt established feeding and wanted her to stay over for the night. Yet the hospital staff were run off their feet (more from lack of staff rather than lots of mummies and babies) and calling for a nurse could take over half an hour for a response. None of us could see how staying in was going to be of any practical use, and it was only stressing both Laura and the baby. Eventually we did leave but not without an emergency run to Tesco to buy formula (and petrol), a whole heck of waiting about, a bit of form filling and a promise from me to stay over the night with Wayne and Laura as moral support.

The waiting to go home had been broken up in the afternoon by a visit from Wayne's mum and dad, and since it was so late when we finally got out the hospital (half 11!!) Grandad Martin met his grandson at home, having been dragged out of bed to come over LOL

Grandad Martin getting his first hold

Welcome to the family little baby George

Being a Steward

This is a photo of Martin decked out in his gear as a Steward at this years Open Golf Tournament held at Royal St George Sandwich.

Sandwich is only a few miles away from us so I guess we kinda take it for granted. It was really interesting to see all the signs going up and all the extra traffic coming down to watch. I had to go to Fowlmeads Park (which is quite nearby) , for work, several days before the start of the golf, and while there we bumped into 3 van loads of policemen. They had been drafted in from Maidstone, as they were cyclists and motorbike traffic police.

Anyway back to Martin. All the local gold clubs were asked to supply volunteers to act as stewards, to direct and control the crowds. Martin immediately booked one of his weeks annual leave and put his name down for the whole week.

Lucky him, he was picked for most days - although the guy organising the men wasnt very good at organisation and forgot that they would all need cover for comfort breaks, meaning Mart got another extra day's work half way through. They were all given a jacket, a hat, a couple of 'quiet' paddles, £10 a day lunch vouchers, and a ticket that got them in for the whole week. They also had lots of freebies while there - a 15 min golf lesson with a pro - free goes in the golf simulators - the chance to stand out in the wind and rain ......

He was under strict instructions to come home with photos of the players too, but he failed miserably and in fact the only photos I do have were taken by someone else on their mobile phone.

Blog post catch up 2

Debden with the girlies

On the weekend of 8th - 10th July Kelly and I joined a lovely lovely bunch of ladies for a crafting, eating, drinking and laughing weekend in Debden. It is arranged amongst a group of us friends who met up on UKscrappers way back in 2003, who later moved to our own forum and who now get together once a year irl. I went 3 years ago and was very very nervous but I didnt need to be as the girls are such kind and welcoming people and all up for a good laugh.

It was Kelly's first time away with us though, as she has only recently joined our little group, although she has known these same ladies for several years on UKS too. She met up with me at Lakeside (where I had been for a few hours window shopping) and then she braved the M25 and my bad navigating to get us there.

Once settled in, fed and watered, we walked into the room set aside for our scrapping to be greated by this table of treats curtesy of the geogeous and talented Debbie.




We had a terrific weekend, one laugh that went on the whole weekend was taking the rise out of poor Ann who had recently celebrated a significant birthday, so we finished on Sunday afternoon by sharing the remains of a cupcake and singing happy birthday.




I didnt take many photos as I was too busy scrapping and having fun, but thanks ladies, and I am so looking forward to next year.

Oh Gosh, so much to blog about.

I have been so busy having fun that I havent really had chance to blog about all the things I have been up to lately. And now I have a few mins to writie it all up I am not sure I can recall all of it but I will have a good try. Gonna do it in several posts.

Post 1


Laura's birday July 3rd (or is it?)



At the start of July it was Laura's 26th birthday and to celebrate, for a change we all went over to her place for a bbq. And for another change the weather was really hot and sunny. Of course poor Laura was heavily pregnant
so it wasnt that pleasant for her, but the rest of us sat in the back garden and got throughly sun tanned (or burnt in Wayne's case) and enjoyed the food and company.



Now here's a thing, and I admit to being a very bad bad mummy. I got the days mixed up..not the dates, I do know the date of my own daughter's birthday. I just happened to have it in my head that the 3rd was not the sunday we were all blowing out candles but was the Monday, so I didnt take her a card or a present. In fact it took me quite a while to understand why everyone was giving her hugs and saying happy birthday when I was convinced there was still a day to go. Boy did I feel pretty low when I finally cottoned on. Luckily Laura found it funny and we all had a laugh over my stupidity. And it purlonged the birthday celebrations for 1 more day too.

Anyway I have promised to take her out after the baby is born to buy her some clothes for herself

Crops v fathers day.

This weekend, over at ATDML there is a cybercrop going on with 12 brilliant brilliant classes and a few challenges with prizes thrown in. Now from my selfish point of view I think this is very bad timing as I am desperate to get out the paper and glue and scrap away for hours. Instead though since the weekend clashes with Father's Day I spent yesterday shopping, cleaning and baking in order to have the kids and their spouses over for an afternoon/evening of bubbles and pizza.

I did have a great time with the family though, we had build your own pizza which in my tiny kitchen is always cause for either a laugh or lots of bad tempers. Yesterday we went for the laugh (although I think towards the 'getting very hungry' stage a few tempers were getting a tad stretched, especially when we run out of pizza base mix and had to send out for more!).

So this morning, after I had once again cleared the kitchen, and been out to buy and deliver my own Father's day gift, I finally got to play in the craft room.

The first class on Friday caused me all sorts of problems to start off with, I found the perfect photos but in the poor light of my craft room couldnt really see the papers I was choosing and it wasnt until Sat. morning that I discovered they didnt match each other at all. I couldnt get either knife/ruler or my woodware cutter to cut a straight line for love nor money.

Eventually I finished it off this morning and am more than pleased with it despite the problems with it. A great class and one I would use again for multiple photos.

Supplies Fancy pants Key Lime paper, Bazille, thickers, papermania holographic butterflies, free magazine stickers,

Photos from when Kelly and I went to London for a free studio photo shoot.

The first challenge was a tag inspired layout or card, which was great since I needed to make cards for both my dad and my Father-in-law. This is a little bit of a cheat as the tag comes from a tag swap I did way back in 2003 when I first joined UKS. Unfortunely it doesnt have the name of whoever made it on it for me to credit and I cant find the notes I made at the time. It certainly inspired this card though.



The second card followed the sketch challenge the girls put up, and after going through lots of scraps I finally found these papers and also rediscovered why I hate rub-ons.



Just to finish off for the moment, one more song for the 30 day challenge. This is Day 25, a song that makes you laugh. I first heard this when my uncle in Australia came over for a visit and dragged my dad round shops looking for it on vynl. He finally tracked down a copy and played it on my parents radiogramme which shows how long ago it was. It works so wonderfully with the irish accent and I can listen to it time and time again and still end up with tears running down my face from laughing so hard. Enjoy.



Murphy's bricks (The Barrel Song)

Still on the list

Another song from the challenge.

Day 10 A song that makes you fall asleep.



Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple 1975


Ooookkkay. I can hear you all saying, how can you possibly fall asleep to that one???

Well obviously I cant but here is the story

When I was about 14/15 I was pursuaded by my 'mates' to partner a guy who was a friend, to his brother's birthday party as he didnt have a date. I was only doing him a favour as I only saw him as a mate but he obviously took it to mean so much more because the next thing I knew I was being dragged round to his house to meet his parents and his brother!! And worse still led up to his room to listen to music.... oooops! Well his idea of music was Led Zepp and Deep Purple albums as background to an afternoon of snogging - not on your life, so the only way I could think to get out of it was, at the earliest opportunity, to fane sleep until finally (several albums later) he woke me up and took me home!

And you all thought the 60's/70's were the time of free love!!!!


Well another day off and again Martin and I started in on The List The trouble is we keep finding other things that also need doing - is that the way of lists?

Anyway he mowed the lawn while I attacked the bindweed, then he needed to go and buy a smaller sander as ours was too big to get into the spaces in the small bedroom where the window sill had been replaced and plastered in. In the meantime I decided that the area where I store all the plant pots and gardening paraphanila needed clearing up so I could get to pick the raspberries. In doing that I unburried the little wooden wheelbarrow planter that Ollie and Kelly had given me as reward for being Mother of the Bride at their wedding (instead of the usual bunch of flowers). It needed a bit of work so I started to punish it with a hammer and some nails, Martin soon came home and put a stop to that, and ended up replacing all the screws that held it together.

None of these jobs were on The List

Neither was taking the bed down and putting it in the attic (done after sanding down the wall lso that there will be room for a cot), or tidying my craft room, or .... Oh well at least stuff got done, even if it wasnt the ones we had intended doing today.

I have settled for an owl theme in the spare bedroom and as well as buying some Owl bedding I started to make an owl mobile. Laura dropped in and did a bit of quality control on it, we came to the conclusion that it was too small (despite me following the pattern to the letter), that I really cant do blanket stitch for toffee, and it doesnt match the bedding so could I make different ones?

Mm back to the drawing board.

On Safari

Today Dad, Mum and I were out visiting gardens again as we joined the Broomfield and Herne Garden Safari. The weather hadnt really improved much from last week, and this time the gardens were way more spread out so it involved a great deal of jumping in and out of the car, and attempting to find parking places as all those that had turned up for it followed each other round the circit of gardens.

The folk showing their gardens had obviously put lots and lots of hard work into the event, but the gardens themselves were not as spectacular or as full of inivative ideas as those the week before, but it was still a great way to go round and nose at how others live, and to meet and chat with some lovely people.

One or two gardens did stand out though, both mum and dad were particularly taken with the garden totally crammed with plants with only a small narrow pathway around and through it.


At every turn there was another ornament or wind charm to keep things interesting and where tropical plants were neighboured next to english roses.

My favourite was the one where we finally collapsed for a cup of tea and cake, not just because of the refreshments and rest but because it was full of all my favourite cottage garden flowers.

I wasnt too sure about the beautiful olde cottage

with this in the back garden.




But I am pretty sure tthis one was dad's best find of the day, the garden that surrounded a working farmhouse, complete with pigs (they had to be teased out with apples just for dad as they had actually just gone to bed for the afternoon). There were chickens, ducks, sheep, and horses the other side of the garden fence too, and a huge veggie growing area.



Another surprise was this garden, I wonder if Kelly remembers? I am told to mention bread and marmite???

The rules

I didnt fancy doing these in order so I thought I would post all 30 challenges here and highlight as I go. And I am going for two together today.

day 26 - a song that you can play on an instrument
day 27 - a song that you wish you could play

I had, eversince I was real small, wanted to play the guitar, but several things stopped me, not least being that mum and dad didnt have money for lessons let alone an instrument. Plus I had no idea where you even started finding out where to get lessons from. When I was 17, I walked into the classroom one lunchtime and one of the girls had bought in her guitar and was doing an extremely good job of playing this!

Layla by Derek and the Dominoes 1970

Of course even more determinded to get my own guitar after that, my first full time job pay packet went on buying one. I still didnt know where to go to get lessons so with the help of a self teaching book I managed to pick out both the chords and the tune to that classic that everyone first learns to play!!

House of the Rising Sun by The Animals 1964

I have to admit thats as far as I ever got in learning it, and it then found its way to the attic where many years later the neck managed to fall off. Mind I dont think I would ever have managed to be as good as the master Mr Eric Clapton!

30 Day song challenge The rules:;

day 01 - your favorite song
day 02 - your least favorite song
day 03 - a song that makes you happy
day 04 - a song that makes you sad
day 05 - a song that reminds you of someone
day 06 - a song that reminds you of somewhere
day 07 - a song that reminds you of a certain event
day 08 - a song that you know all the words to
day 09 - a song that you can dance to
day 10 - a song that makes you fall asleep
day 11 - a song from your favorite band
day 12 - a song from a band you hate
day 13 - a song that is a guilty pleasure
day 14 - a song that no one would expect you to love
day 15 - a song that describes you
day 16 - a song that you used to love but now hate
day 17 - a song that you hear often on the radio
day 18 - a song that you wish you heard on the radio
day 19 - a song from your favorite album
day 20 - a song that you listen to when you’re angry
day 21 - a song that you listen to when you’re happy
day 22 - a song that you listen to when you’re sad
day 23 - a song that you want to play at your wedding
day 24 - a song that you want to play at your funeral
day 25 - a song that makes you laugh
day 26 - a song that you can play on an instrument
day 27 - a song that you wish you could play
day 28 - a song that makes you feel guilty
day 29 - a song from your childhood
day 30 - your favorite song at this time last year

Listen to the music

I just discovered the 30 day song challenge on FB - ok I am probably a bit behind the times, but what the heck, its still great fun.

Day 01: Favourite song - well thats a no-brainer, its just got to be Summer Breeze by The Isley bros. 1974

This version has Ernie doing the most amazing guitar solo ever!!!!

I remember when it was first released (yes I am that old) Our 'local' was The Neptune, a pub right on the actual beach at Whitstable and I can clearly remember sitting on the beach, drinking a pint in the blistering sun (its always summer in your memories isnt it?) and listening to it on the radio (no ipods in those days, I dont think even Sony Walkmans were around then). Then some of the guys thought it would be a laugh to go swimming fully clothed. Of course there is always one, and Findus (nick name) lost his specs in the sea. He had to wait until the tide went out to find them but since low tide was around half ten that night, it was too dark so he had to come back just after dawn to look. He did find them, but it gave us all a laugh.


A few years back I introduced music into my reception class, we had music to tidy up to, music to work to, music to sit still ready for quiet/listening time to. I would try to theme the peices of music I chose to use, so obviously for the summer term the children were exposed to this song. I only had the full 7 min long player version but only played the beginning, just enough time to sit down and show they were ready for story time. That is unless their behaviour that day had not been quite up to scratch. They knew they had upset me if I made them listen to the whole song, beginning to end (without talking because it was Miss's favourite song which was not to be spoilt by talking children) Usually by the end of it we were all alot calmer. The children soon got to know and love the song (often they would beg me NOT to turn it off!) and other staff members walking through my class room would find it really amusing to see 30 reception age children singing 'Makes me feel fine, Blowing through the Jasmine of my Mind'.

They just really do not make songs like this anymore :(

Our list

Today both Martin and I had our days off together for a change, so as we lay in bed deciding what we were going to do today, I made a verbal list of all the things that needed doing. Martin said he had forgotten what they all were by the time I had finished reeling them off, so while he made a cuppa I typed up a long long list of things to do in the house, the garden, and at the shops. I pinned it up in the kitchen and told him to prioritise it!

Our starting point was Compare the Market dot com, as his car insurance was due - only days after mine which is real bad planning. Getting a quote involved looking to see if Martin's points for speeding had come off yet which meant we had to carefully take the bits of tatty paper making up his driving licence out of his wallet and lay them out on the table. The points had come off so I decided it really was time to change paper for photo id license!!

It wasnt on the list but its really easy to do on line now they can use your passport photo and signature plus its lots cheaper than I had been led to believe, so that job came smartly after the insurance quote while on the laptop.

A cup of tea later and we hit the garden, Martin to weed the patio, me to sort out the greenhouse (the packet of cress I had dropped on the floor had now sproated all over the place and needed weeding, plus everything has grown so quickly I needed to get everything tied up to the canes). Despite the lack of rain this year my garden is probably growing the best it every has done, and I have bumper crops of everything on the go. Mind I do have an ongoing war with snails to fight and I'm not sure you is winning, but I reckon we will be eating salad twice a day from now until the end of August. We had home grown cress and rocket in our lunch today.

We ploughed through the list - finishing the filling of holes in the little bedroom, putting the curtains back up from their annual wash, Martin finally replaced the makeshift log in the hole in the wall with a proper brick, he took the old high chair to the tip and we sized up the old cot sides to see if they could be used as a fence around the pond (they can).

Mart reckons we got about 25% of the list done which considering the length of it, and that a lot of it involves hitting up Ikea again, or carpet stores, or other shops, was a good days work.