Sunset from Hill House, Mount Helen. February 2024

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Last weekend. Late!

Do you know - I never wrote up the visit to the Belper Steam and Veteran Fair. Which is a real pity because it was ever so cute. It's not actually in Belper. It's in a huge field in Duffield, close to Derby. The Builder and I went on Saturday afternoon. It was a nice afternoon, a lovely drive and the promise of a few traction engines at the end of it. Why wouldn't you go? Apart, of course, from laziness and inertia, which nearly did for us!

It is a lovely drive. You go down the A6 through Matlock and Matlock Bath. Places that I only ever go to on my way somewhere else (Derby, usually!) and even then not often. They look like up market seaside resorts, only in the middle of a Derbyshire Dale. We really must go on a proper exploration one day.

Anyway. The steam fair. It was lovely! A min-version of the Dorset Steam Fair, which is enormous and packed. Belper was much more manageable. There were traction engines and steam fair organs and wee little tiny traction engines. There were old, wartime ambulances and fire engines. And caravans. Including Romany caravans. And a tiny one. A sort of dolls house for gypsies! There was a falconry exhibition and a pet dog show and pork sandwiches and junk stalls and all sorts. Cost a fiver to get in - which meant we could stay for a couple of hours then make our way home without thinking that we had wasted our entrance money, or missed out on huge wodges of the fair. At one of the fairground organs they had girlies doing the can can. It really was a lovely afternoon. There's another one at Cromford at the beginning of August. If it's a nice day, we might go. Then, of course, we are going to the Great Dorset Steam Fair in September. A summer of steam!

Sunday saw Bea and Steve joining us for lunch. Back in December, The Builder and I had been in Waitrose as it was closing for Christmas, and bought a rather fine turkey at half price. Would do for Easter, thought I. Except that at Easter we had Tabitha, Jeanette and Rebecca amongst the eating guests, none of whom likes turkey. NO worries. I'll have turkey for my summer party. Except that the summer party happens, this year, to be Tabitha's 30th birthday bash. And she still doesn't like turkey. And that damn bird was taking up almost a whole drawer in the freezer. Nothing for it. Will have to invite turkey eaters around to help consume it. And Bea and Steve turned out to be just the turkey eaters I was looking for. The Builder has bought a gazebo a few weeks ago and we had that up, so spent the afternoon sat outside, eating and drinking and generally making merry. We went for a walk through the sidings and the wetlands and admired the highland cows and the Hebridean sheep (I was mistaken when I said they were Shetland sheep) and the birds and generally had a Good Time. Then Bea and Steve went home. And I went to bed.

It's done well that turkey. It's fed us ever since. We've just eaten the last of it and I've got loads of stock for gravies and stews and things. £9 well spent, if you ask me!

And we now have the television back. The SKY man came on Tuesday. It seems that the window cleaner had knocked the dish well and truly out of alignment. If only the bloody man had said, The Builder could have hopped up a ladder and put it back where it should be. Ten days without the telly for no particularly good reason. Not that we would have watched it much - but I did miss Springwatch.

It's raining. Started yesterday with a sudden storm at about 3pm. By about quarter to four we had a waterfall on Level 3 of the Adsetts Centre. The builders (that's the University's builders, not my Builder) had breached the temporary skin they've had in while they're building our extension and the sudden storm thought this was jolly good sport. It's still raining. You can hear the garden purring.


It was Tabitha's birthday yesterday. She turned 30!!

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