Making Pomanders

I love making pomanders. The citrus and spicy aromas and the rich, bright colours make me feel quite festive.

For some reason I didn't make any last year and I missed having their evocative scent around the house.

I wrap the ribbon around the oranges securing at each end with a dressmaker's pin. Then I make holes in the orange skin with an old knitting needle.

Then I place the cloves in ground cinnamon and stick them in the holes. I dust the oranges again with the cinnamon. The oranges then need placing somewhere warm so they can dry out.

As they dry the oranges become lighter. They can be hung from the tree or placed in a bowl on a table. They look lovely and smell wonderful. Definitely the scent of the season.

At Solomon's Temple, Buxton

On Saturday we walked in the Grin Low Country Park near the Spa town of Buxton. Our goal was to reach Solomon's Temple, sometimes called Grin Low Tower.

There had been a light covering of snow and the air was very misty and cold.

As we walked the air began to clear and there were glimmerings of light from behind the heavy clouds.

We reached the temple and went up to the top; the stairs were very damp and slippy.

The views were stunning both through the windows and from the top of the tower.

The tower stands on top of an ancient Bronze Age barrow known as Grin Hill, is about 20 feet high and is 1,440ft above sea level.

It is a Victorian folly built in 1896 by Solomon Mycock, a local farmer and landowner, who wanted to help provide work for some of the locals who were unemployed; this was done by public subscription and with the help of the Duke of Devonshire. When the tower was built an archaeological dig revealed skeletons of ancient 'Beaker' people.

The walk from the car park and back was very invigorating but we were so cold when we got back to the car - it was time to find some warm soup for lunch so we drove back towards the Longnor Craft Centre, where we ate our late lunch surrounded by some beautiful local arts and crafts - unfortunately the photos I took inside didn't turn out very well because of the light levels, so here is a - link - to their website so you can see for yourselves what they have to offer.

Thankful for Small Things

The month of November is nearly over and I can't say I'm sorry. It has been a bleak, grey and wet month - on some days hard to get through but there has been light at the end of the tunnel and I've taken pleasure in a few small things. Curling up with a good book, watching repeats of Midsomer Murders, sipping hot soup for lunch, walking each day if the rain allows and getting stuck into my Family History again. Our cats are an on going pleasure curling up on my lap in the evenings, waking me up in the mornings with a soft paw on my face. I love them - even though they do move just as I'm taking a photograph of them! Just before this photo Chloe was posing at the side of the flowers looking very pretty - as she does, oh well.....

Some of the Paperwhites I planted at the beginning of October have appeared earlier than I expected them to.

Their glorious scent fills the conservatory and wafts delicately through the house an unexpected chink of light in what has been a grey tinged world.

Something to be thankful for.

Trees

On Sunday morning we took a long walk in the woods on the Trentham Estate.

The sun was shining after a sharp early morning shower

I found myself gazing up into the leafless autumnal trees

Their discarded leaves lying on the woodland floor, sticking underfoot in the mud and turning from bright copper to dull brown

I loved the blackness of the bare branches against the blue sky

Trees are beautiful throughout the seasons, bright and new in spring, lush and green in summer

awash with glorious colour in autumn and bleakly sculptural in winter

This old tree had split, curled and leaned in several directions

What is it about the shape of trees that is so beautiful and so satisfying?

A Visit to Nottingham

I'm also including this post in the 'Things I am thankful for in November' series of posts (see the button on my sidebar) because this one is about good friends and neighbours. Yesterday we visited friends in Nottingham. We set out early and were in the city centre by 9.40a.m. I've always loved Nottingham - I remember coming here as a small child on shopping trips with my Mum, aunt and cousins. The things I remembered most about the city as a child are the lions in front of the Council Chambers on Old Market Square, what we used to called Slab Square. I'm not sure if the name has changed since its recent re-design. I've yet to see the whole square since it has been refurbished because the first time we came the hoardings were still in place before it was opened, the next time the ice rink was in place and this year again the ice rink is there. They were also decorating the huge Christmas tree using a scaffold.

Here is one of the lions, I couldn't get far enough away to photograph both of them but I remember they were always the place to meet - 'see you at the lions' was the usual arrangement.

In this part of the city the trams whizz by with a clunk and a clank. They are great fun! They also all have names - the one below is named for footballing legend Brian Clough manager of Nottingham Forest from 1975 to 1993 - see here for the other names including Jesse Boot founder of Boots Chemists.

We had parked in the Broad Marsh Centre but actually wanted to visit John Lewis which is in the Victoria Centre; the walk between the two isn't far and I enjoyed window shopping along Bridlesmith Gate and Clumber Street on the way.

I was pleased to see that the Roland Emett water powered clock or 'The Aqua Horological Tintinnabulator' is still in the Victoria Centre although for some reason it didn't play the usual music on the hour as we watched the birds and animals with their musical instruments whizz round at exactly 11a.m. Installed in 1973 it has become, like the lions in the Square, another meeting place for shoppers and friends. More information about the clock here

We left the city and drove up to where our friends live and had a lovely lunch catching up on news and chattering about books, films, cooking, food and lots of other things around the lunch table and then in their comfy living room overlooking the park. All too soon the sun disappeared and darkness fell over the park and tree lined promenade - it was time to get ready to drive home. Thankfully the strong winds that had been promised didn't materialise and we had a good journey back to Stoke. Our kind neighbour had been in and fed the cats, closed curtains and put on the lights for our return home. So after a lovely day yesterday I'm thankful for good friends and neighbours.

Things I am thankful for 3 and 4

Ever since I can remember I've loved books and reading. I remember my Mum reading me the tales of Flopsy Bunny and Little Grey Rabbit and of reading myself; books like Enid Blyton's Secret Seven and Mary Norton's The Borrowers books. I loved Wind in the Willows, The Secret Garden, Children of the New Forest, Gamble for a Throne and Lorna Doone plus a series of books whose names now escape me about three sisters from Northumberland who became a ballet dancer, a horse rider and a flamenco dancer - I'd love to know what these books were called. Later I worked my way through the books of Georgette Heyer, Margaret Irwin, Jean Plaidy and Anya Seton. Some of the books I studied at school have become favourites like Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. I remember reading Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham at school and discovering the Lord Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy L Sayers at the library. Nowadays I tend to read more modern fiction and crime fiction - writers like PD James, Priscilla Masters, Val McDermid, Susan Hill, Kate Atkinson, Stephen Booth, Ian Rankin, Peter Robinson and John Harvey are just some of my favourites. I've recently discovered the wonderful novels of Henning Mankell and the Imogen Quy novels written by Jill Paton Walsh - set in Cambridge in the fictitious St Agatha's College.

Of course, I wouldn't have been able to read all these books without libraries. We lived in a small village where a mobile library came every other week. We were also members of the library in our nearest town which was a bus ride away. I loved both these libraries and choosing books to read. Where ever I've lived I've always joined the nearest library - I can't imagine life without them. Of course today they offer far more than books; you can order books on line and check the progress of your order, attend a reading or writing group, use the Internet, borrow CD's or DVDs, find out about local activities, local history or family history and at some even have a cup of coffee. They are light, airy, welcoming places - but it is the libraries of my childhood that I remember the most, the dark wood and tiled floors, the rows and rows of books, the librarians with their boxes of tickets and inky date stamps. I loved this so much I used to play libraries on the table at home with the books from our shelves, slips of paper for the tickets and a hot water bottle top as a date stamp. So, you can see that books and libraries have been and still are a big part of my life and I'm thankful for that.

Remembrance

Vera Brittain was born in nearby Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1893 the only daughter of a weathly family who owned paper mills in Hanley and Cheddleton. When she was a child her family moved to Macclesfield and then to Buxton. At the outbreak of WW1 she was an undergraduate at Somerville College, Oxford. Both her fiance Roland Leighton and her brother Edward Brittain joined the British Army; wanting to aid the war effort herself she left her studies and joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment and served in Malta, France and England. In her autobiographical work 'Testament of Youth' she writes about her experiences of the war and her work treating the badly wounded soliders and prisoners of war. Roland Leighton was killed in France in December 1915 and her brother Edward who, in 1916, was wounded at the Battle of the Somme and awarded a Military Cross, was killed in Italy in 1918. After a few weeks working as a VAD she wrote:-

‘It was very hard to believe that not far away men were being slain ruthlessly.... The destruction of men, as though beasts, whether they be English, French, German or anything else, seems a crime to the whole march of civilisation.’

'Testament of Youth' was written both as a memoir of her wartime nursing experiences and as a literary memorial to Roland Leighton, Edward Brittain and their many friends who were killed or injured during the war - just a few of the thousands who became the lost generation.

At the Eleventh hour, on the Eleventh Day, of the Eleventh month - we will remember them