It's a trifle damp here . . .

Well, I know it rains a lot in Wales, but deary me, we have had more than our fair share these past few days. My fields are just absolutely ruined. One of my gardening books says never to even tread on your lawn in January, for fear of spoiling it. Imagine the damage two ponies do to a field . . .

The road beside our river was already partly underwater, with more spurting up from the drains, when I had to go out first thing. I had to turn around and take an alternative route, but even that had its problems as there were torrents of water pouring down from the fields (which in many parts are a good bit above the road) and there was standing water in the dips in the lanes. Anyway, I had just got home, having had the local radio on and learned that the main road between here and school was blocked, and my son was dropped home by a neighbour, who had heard the same and was bringing her boys back.

I took some photos later, on the way to the PO, but have yet to load them – then comes trying to add them to this blog . . .

My dad used to say I had a “butterfly mind” as I would flit from one interest to another. He wasn’t quite right, as I have always stayed faithful to the same interests, and a few more besides, but sometimes I am in the mood for one thing, sometimes another. Today I treated myself to a wonderful Needlework magazine called “Inspirations”. It’s Australian, quarterly, and quite an indulgence (but I’m worth it!) Now my fingers are twitching to sew several of the projects pictured, and I am especially taken with the concept of sewn ATC’s (artist’s trading cards). A friend on another blog does the artistic variety, with incredible skill and imagination. Now I am taken with the idea of perhaps an embroidered card, though I fear once sewn, it would be difficult to part with.

As for the Cornish dialect:

“Knackt oal athurt, I petched to ren –

He coosed me down tha road –

I heerd un tarving arter me:

Aw! How he pank’d an’ blaw’d!”

I “think” one could loosely translate as:

“Knocked all athwart, I pitched to run –

He coursed me down the road –

I heard him struggling after me:

Aw! How he panted and blowed.”

“Pitched” as in started ? or as in “pitched battle”? Don’t know . . .

Here’s a link for Cornish dialect (fascinating site): http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~marcie/kernow/dialect.html#P

Petched IS pitched . . .

Monday, Monday . . .

Hmmm - I am singing the words to the old song in my head, and looking out on blackness still. There is the slightest lightening of the sky but only noticable through one of the Velux roof windows in the attic . . . A tractor has just driven into the farmyard over the wall. They have a milking herd so have been working for a couple of hours already.

Many thanks to all those of my friends who left comments. I have now just managed to enable them! GTM - a codlin is a type of apple, but Codlins and Cream is the country name for the Greater Willow Herb (which I have growing in my garden in totally the wrong place, but it is so pretty I allow it to stay - even when 4 feet high in an alpine bed looks a bit out of place!) WHEN I can work out how to, I want a photo of it at the top of my blog.

Well, our trip to the Car Boot Sale yesterday wasn’t wasted, as I got two little books to add to my collection. I always feel so disappointed if there isn’t a single book that I would like. I bought “Timothy Towser and 19 other Cornish Tales in prose and verse”, dated 1906. These stories had originally been published in Netherton’s Cornish Almanacks . . . I couldn’t resist it as the language (dialect) used inside is so archaic and needed saving for posterity. Some of the words I recognize, as they seem to be used across the West Country, but some took the greatest working out and some still remain a mystery! There was also a dialect poem from a 1963 copy of the West somethingorother and Royal Cornwall Gazette. All for 50 pence.

The other book was “Over the Farmyard Gate” – Country Life in the 1930’s, by G K Nelson. It has wonderful illustrations and harks back to a time when horses were still working the land. I shall indulge myself with sharing little excerpts now and again on here.

They are both fascinating windows on the past. Now I know that fal-tha-rals are useless things; that mahogany is gin sweetened with treacle; “okum-sniffy” (!) was a hot and sweet little glass of grog; that a missment is a mistake or error; that a "reg’lar quilter" is not to do with patchwork but being in a flutter or flurry . . . Or it was a hundred and odd years ago . . . Here’s a little verse to get you pondering the meaning:

“Knackt oal athurt, I petched to ren –

He coosed me down tha road –

I heerd un tarving arter me:

Aw! How he pank’d an’ blaw’d!”

A Winter's Tale . . .

I hate these dark winter mornings. In the summer, if I wake up at 4.30 a.m. and can't sleep, I can quite happily get up and catch up on jobs, but in the winter it is a different matter and when it is wet, overcast and miserable, morning never seems to come. There have been some mornings during the past week when I had to put the headlights on main beam when driving my son down to pick up the school bus in the village - and this was at 8 a.m.

Today seems no exception - wet, overcast and miserable, which is a pity as I was intending to take a stroll around the Car Boot Sale on the Showground. Not that there will be many stalls down there on a wet January morning, nor would there be even if it was dry. After Christmas, it takes a good month before many people start coming out to sell their wares. I do like a bargain, I have to confess, and being a collector - no, a hoarder, of books, I love fossicking around in boxes of books, never knowing what I will find. Sometimes it is a book I have been seeking for years; sometimes it will be a book I never knew I wanted until I saw it!! It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't collect so many different sorts of books: old horse books; cookery books - especially if they have the word country or farmhouse in the title; country living books; literary biographies; social history; archaeology; history; crafts and needlecrafts; the pony books from my childhood - in hardback, as the paperback ones are now falling apart, but still treasured . . .

Sometimes I just find it really depressing - stalls with pathetically few items for sale; quite elderly pensioners selling bits of cheap glassware and china that they have bought off other stalls even more cheaply, just to eke out their pension; stalls with such a pile of absolute rubbish that it would have been a waste of fuel to take it to the tip - yet they seem to think that people will find their rusty old tin baths or bits of chain irresistable! The best stalls of course are the ones where people really have no idea of the value of what they are virtually giving away. These are easy to find as people will be round them, like bees round a honeypot, the dealers at the sharp end, diving into the back of the car and even unwrapping things for the poor bewildered stallholder, who has never sold at a car boot sale before . . . I was brought up to have manners, so I don't dive in with sharp elbows, but watch for my chance!

But today, I think it will just be a trip out for the Sunday newspapers instead and perhaps make a start on clearing out the junk from what was grandly called the Morning Room on the house details when we viewed, more than 20 years ago now. It is now a very large Glory Hole and needs Sorting . . . Just the thing for a wet Sunday.