Gorgeous day; gorgeous view Kaimoana. I'm so pleased it worked out and you had your day at the seaside.
You're right when it's a rare treat it's even better.
☀️ ☀️ ⛱️ ⛱️ ☀️☀️☀️
I've come home from Gaelic with a sore brain. I find it hard.
I was at a funeral today which was rather sad because the family were very sad and crying.
I have another house to look around tomorrow in the hope that eventually I'll find the one!
Sweet dreams Lobstars. I had nightmares last night and woke terrified.
I don't know why.
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(981 Posts)Sorry Grammaretto - spent hours yesterday at my mother-in-law's house...
Day off today. Pizza at my daughter's
Hope other 🦞🦂 are OK
Kaimoana I’m so happy you had such a lovely trip out and were able to enjoy the sea views and the sound of the waves and birds. Should nice of Linda to take you. Your brunch sounds nice too. Good to hear you had a lovely day thanks for the photo.
Jan you must have a lovely view too. I shouldn’t complain as I have the river but I do prefer the sea. It poured again here too. The river is flooding in some places.
Grammaretto i haven’t attended a funeral for a long time. I expect I would find it much harder now. Hope you’re ok.
Sorry about the nightmare. I’ll send Jeeves round to watch over you………or was he the cause of your nightmare 😱
Hope the viewing goes well
Our tassel placement, Doodle, is very much weather dependent.
Nothing worse than a soggy tassel bobbing up and down where it's not wanted.
Sorry to hear you were disturbed by bad dreams, Grammaretto, hopefully you will have a peaceful night to make up for it.
Is your house viewing near by? Hoping it goes well - if that's what you want!
I am minded of those 'house hunting' programmes.
Having rejected all three proposed new abodes, they say 'Well, thank you anyway.
It has helped us clarify in our minds what we don't want'.
Kaimoana - so very pleased you had a lovely day out and the kindest of friends to look after you for the day.
Do you suppose that your check up from the Sallies has anything to do with identifying your needs in any prospective move?
No fatted calf on the 🐈 horizon as yet.
I'm having a smart meter installed so sitting in a gloomy room which is cooling rapidly.
He says it will take 90 minutes. I may go out shopping!
The house I viewed today is in an awful state so needs gutting and probably a new roof infact new everything. 😅 I rather liked it though. I think I like the idea of adaptable spaces. It's quite large but on one floor.
I suspect a builder will buy it, pull it down and build 2 houses in its place.
I glazed the pots and think I've decided on my next knitting project.
I stocked up on vitamin D today to counteract this weather without sunshine.
I slept better last night. No more nightmares. I think Jeeves may have helped.
Grammaretto please don’t buy a fixer up. DH and I did it (unintentionally) and apart from almost wiping us out financially actually living there while the work was done was a nightmare. It was lovely when it was finished but DH didn’t like it so as soon as it was finished we moved !
Art for me tomorrow and afternoon tea to follow. 😊
Take care all
Just TWO houses Grammaretto?
Here, hardly ever does one house sell as exactly that.
Developers are in like vultures because in the same space they can put up a 3 - 6 storey with 2 apartments on every floor.
I'm told the rooms are tiny; 6 sq metres is the minimum so I guess that's what they'll be (although bedrooms can be smaller).
Makes me grateful for my small but not Lilliputian unit.
A lot of work there, Grammaretto. I think Doodle's words wise.
What are you knitting next?
Rain and more rain here today, I popped into the library for a book and a quiet contemplative sit.
Having negotiated the plethora of buggies and discarded wellies, I was about to be serenaded by a chorus of the Dingly Dangly scarecrow with its flippy floppy hat.
Exited PDQ. Oh for the weighty silence and the gravitas of the Passmore Edwards library of my childhood.
AIBU? Probably.
Was the Passmore Edwards library in London or in Cornwall Ixion. I've been looking it up but there seem to be 2.
It's good that there are still libraries although very different from those of our childhood. In our town the library is beneath the gym and next to the swimming pool and high school. It works quite well.
I sent the link for the doer upper to my architect who thinks it would be easy to make liveable.
The planners have refused our application for a new build in my garden.
Thanks for the warning Doodle. I know you're right. All my DC think the same.
I don't think developers would get permission to build a block of flats but they may.
It's not stopped raining here either. But we're expecting snow next.
I'm going to knit my DD a vest/gilet/waistcoat in a minty green wool.
I hope all Lobstars are bearing up.
We have just had a formal contents evaluation for probate for my dear mother-in-law's home by a highly experienced auctioneer
It was truly a shock how little the things she loved are worth. I had no expectations that her glass and China would be worth anything (she has a few Royal Doulton and Lladro for example) but he struggled to find anything of significance and said the dining chairs she had valued at £400 each many years ago would struggle to sell
He was unsurprisingly sad about the way people are turning their backs on second hand whilst still being ostensibly "green". He said he was forced to bundle up huge lots of China - and even then that was only selling to Korea!
He said there was a big market in Korea for dinner services and he had a guy who came to him once a fortnight to packup all the dinner sets he'd bought
The signed prints, oils and so on she'd collected over a lifetime are worth a fraction of her purchase price - obviously she has bought things she liked by either lesser-known or prolific artists now out of fashion
He did point out that selling everything privately, item by item, would raise more than trying to sell at an auction - but obviously it will take time and effort.
Anyway, it just made me sad. Her little folder labeled "valuables" included her silver cutlery teaspoons/ fish knives and forks, a silver sugar shaker and salt and pepper set. Also a gold watch, a beautiful sapphire and diamond dress ring (£80), a gorgous chest, aforementioned chairs and numerous other surprises.
He said his son and daughter-in-law who are also in the business never want anything from the auctions and he said he recently "cleared" his mum's house and it was exactly the same.
It really wasn't the fact that so little was of financial value there - it was more the sadness of it all. It made me remember sending lots of my parents' furniture to auction and how little it raised - it was more the reminder that the love is in the memory rather than the "stuff". The items in our house that we have loved are likely to be unwanted by our children and their generation too
I think I need to give myself a wobble and get rid of our surplus old stuff/ antiques that we don't use.... and why did I think my lovely daughter-in-law might be pleased with my parents' exquisite bone-handled fish servers! 
I sent a message to my children asking if any of them have a special memory of anything at my mother-in-law's house and if so to let me know so it won't end up at a charity shop if it's not something my husband wants.
I had a reply from the one daughter I know was especially close to her (and really gave time to her). She said she wanted her little bag of nail care items as she used to do her grandmother's nails for her - and please could she have the nearly empty Chanel "Chance" perfume bottle and also the wooden washing-up brush
😭
I think this will be a long job
Join my club NotSpaghetti . 😟
The upside of selling things one by one online is that you meet the next owner who appreciates the treasures
One of the prayers at Tuesday's funeral reminded us that we came into the world with nothing and take nothing with us when we leave ....
It's hard though saying goodbye to familiar things.
Our house is totally stuffed with treasures, Grammaretto - and of a different order to my mother-in-law's!
She has been "death clearing" for a lifetime it seems to me so I truthfully assumed it would be a relatively easy job to be honest. She hasn't stored 1000s of unused items as we (I?) have. I thought her paintings and prints would be straightforward and the oh-so- dainty jewellery that I would just ruin.
But yes. You are right, our items we have already sold were obviously wanted and that is nice. Also freecycle can be satisfying - though not always!
It did make me sad though. Maybe it was the memory of emptying my own parent's house over 30 years ago...
Clearing out is hard. I have to be in the right mood and preferably with a helper to stop me wallowing in nostalgia.
Like you Doodle, my friends think I shouldn't go for a doer upper.
Music man came today and he's as optimistic as ever about his music school here.
I shall just have to keep looking and maybe the right place will appear.
I am disappointed in the planning system. That's an understatement.
It snowed a bit today and I am supposed to be driving north this weekend for another wood firing.
ixion i remember our library well from my childhood. My brother used to take me there once a week and I’d choose my books. I was an avid reader as a child and teenager and read several books a week during school holidays.. I loved the quietness. Not so these days.
Grammaretto i do feel it’s a shame you can have your own house in the grounds of your current one. The problem with having to do work on a new home is that it invariably needs more done and more spent than you realise. It is easy to be taken advantage of if you don’t know much about costs and then there’s all the noise and mess associated with it too.
Hope your firing goes well
Notspaghetti i find it sad to get rid of other peoples treasures. Loved and sentimental things that only mean something to the person who kept them. I remember sorting out my mums things and coming across lots of red jumpers. We all bought her red because of her black hair and it suited her.
Kaimoana the developers are building so many flats here I seriously wonder what I’ll happen to all the people who live here. No extra doctors or hospitals or schools just block after block of flats.
No, Grammaretto, I was on the London end of Passmore Edwards' benevolence.
A big, imposing (well it seemed that way when you're a pre-schooler plus) oak-panelled building, whispering the order of the day and peeking only into the Adult Reading Room, where all the broadsheets were displayed on lecterns, fastened down by wooden slats to avoid nicking🤷♀️.
I have to say, the children's section was remarkably well stocked.
If anyone is interested in this Victorian philanthropist, this is one very good, tried and tested link -
spitalfieldslife.com/2016/04/04/passmore-edwards-libraries-in-the-east-end/
I hope your drive north is hazard-free.
I too had to meet up with the Probate Valuer after my DM's death.
He was, of course, right about the limited value of contents therein.
But although we realised that this would be the case, it was terribly sad to have it confirmed by an outsider that stuff that DM had personally treasured throughout her life was, in fact, valueless in the cold light of day.
I am in 😇 mode.
For the first time, I arranged for an Oven Cleaner chap to 'do' our oven, as Mr.I seems to have fallen by the wayside in his commitment.
One look and he maintained there was nothing which would justify his professional input. Apparently, I have a good 6 months left before it needs blitzing.
I think I had set my bar too high ...
Grammaretto, I love your photos.
I thought the second one with the flash of yellow, the cables, the tree, the bumpy wiggly curvature of the road and then the snowy hills beyond is really perfect
Thank you
Ixion, well done you on being rejected by the oven man! 
ixion well I’ve never heard of that before. You must have a super clean oven . Mine is a pyromaniac so I don’t have to do much (wrong word but you know what I mean ) 🤣🤣
Yes it is sad when others treasured items are discarded as worthless . I still have a tiny tatty headless bear (I have his head too) that my MiL had in a drawer. Have no idea of its significance but as she’d kept it safe I didn’t want to throw it out. Also have DH’s battered and many times recovered stuffed toy dog.
Grammaretto hope your tri and the firing is successful
The Sallies rep came to inspect the property only but over the years she and I have formed a casual but genuine friendship.
She said there would be help with packing when I move and also properties I can choose from should I still be judged safe living alone.
I'm not really. So hard to do anything when you can see so little and I feel my life diminishing so rapidly - even plain knitting of scarves is becoming hard.
My forearms have burn scars and my finger ends have been sliced so often they are numb! 
All this is my own fault for being stubborn and trying to do what I should admit is now beyond me (or more accurately, behind me). 
Valentine's Day today and I was reading Maeve Binchy short stories in which, coincidentally, a woman had never received a V. card.**
Neither have I but I was given the choice by an obstetrician, "Would you like a Valentine's Day baby?"
That was in 1979 and my son has been an absolute joy ever since.
We've never had a single quarrel in all these years.
We don't always have the same opinion or point of view as he is so very like me in most things.
We are both slow to anger and laughter comes easily and often.
A most welcome and precious child.
** I once gave my husband a Valentine card, from love but hoping he might take the hint and reciprocate.
The following day I saw the card in the rubbish bin and mentioned it.
"Valentine's Day was yesterday" he said.
Perfectly true of course but the death knell of any hopes the hint might be taken 
Hey-ho
Ixion.
That is terrific!
...of course it's a bit scary too...
😱
Hello Lobstars... It's been lovely reading all your news. Kaimoana...a special Valentine cwtch for you today. The Valentine illusion for DH has just been ruined methinks... He's just walked into the hairdresser's where I'm having highlights and I've gone back to the old fashioned cap so he's been treated to me looking like Yul Brynner. Bless him he didn't even blink.
Ixion...I am in awe ...do you eat out a lot? Or takeaway meals. I will never ever be in your position for sure....
Notspag... Your poor hormones are taking a battering just now....I feel for you as I'm post op/anaesthetic edge of weepiness....simple things setting me off at any time. It must be so hard for you and DH sorting through his Mother's ...life. We all have special things that only we know the story of why they mean so much and they will never mean the same to anyone else really. My daughters got house clearance without telling me in to clear the home I was born in after my sister died, I would have loved to have had my Dad's missal...black leather with many prayer cards, tissue thin pages and my memories of standing beside him...(he was 6ft 5in tall) in church and Mass in Latin. He died when I was 9 aged 42 due to medical negligence. The girls may not known the significance of it but when just writing this has made me well up...See what I mean about weepy.
Luckily I'm so new to the Lobstars that I haven't joined the cheerleading yet so not had the thrill of a soggy tassel thus far.
Grammaretto...I do love the sound of your get togethers....Safe travels North...the weather forecast isn't that great for the next week it seems. It's been gloriously sunny today... Very Springlike, it does lift the spirits.
DH starts his new job on Monday, he is excited which is lovely to see. I will miss him though even though I am managing fine, he has been so encouraging which has kept me spurred on. No crutches, the odd paracetamol as needed., walking straight and increasing the distance each day. I even did 2 hours in the garden on Thursday albeit gentle. I will be eternally grateful for the surgeons giving me a life back.
Doodle I know what you mean about blocks of flats going up everywhere. Where were used to live in Surrey there were so many beautiful detached houses being demolished and replaced with soulless places.
* Got to go...cap coming off*
Thanks for the card Cherry. Love and hugs from me to all. Not up to posting tonight. Forgive me. Catch up tomorrow xx
A hard day for you, Doodle.
Hugs x
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