Dedicated to Misty the Collie.

Hello everyone. Its sort of back to normal for a while, Judith's Mum is recovering well and has some mobility in her new hip. Her Dad is still in Oxford and may take a bit longer to get as far in his recovery. So we are both carrying on with the renovation/decoration of the last bedroom. We ran out of money for the Decorator James, so are finishing off ourselves. I actually quite like painting and being 'handy' but I could easily have wept after 3 unsuccessful attempts to put up another ceiling rose/chandelier combination, sodding thing kept on pulling loose from the paint and had to resort to some very Heath Robinson tactics including step ladders, extending paint pole and no more nails. Oh yes, and hacking the rose to bits and re-engineering (that's bodging) the light fitting. Well, its up now and I will be happy never to do another one in my life. This is in the 'dual aspect' room that James painted for us. You may notice the photos have got a bit more detail, that's mainly thanks to the new wide angle lens I have bought. 'All the better to see you with, cried the wolf'

 

So this is the 'green room' so named by us because the previous owners had this as a kids room, complete with bright green woodwork , animal stencils in primary colours etc. It took 3 or 4 coats of special white undercoat and gloss to cover it all up. The new coving makes this room/en suite look like it was always there.

 

Same room but from different angle. Looks ok, no? The carpets come on Thursday for all the rooms and stairs/landing. Just a bit more in here, skirting needs another coat of gloss, the new easy (it says here) light fixture and some shelves/ rails in the new cupboard and that's all the decorating done, Hooooray!!!!

 

Because we have been waiting six weeks for the roofer to appear we got advice from another roofer who told us the roof vents that the project manager had ordered were for tiles, not slates so completely unfit for purpose. Judith did some research and the ones we really needed came from a firm in west Lakes called Burlington Slate. So off I trot to Kirby-in -Furness via Lancaster using the sat nav. This takes me up, up into the wilder parts of the lake district and through the gates of the Quarry . I reported to the site office, donned my hi-viz jacket and was told to report to the weigh bridge, collect tiles and return with chitty and pay before I left.

Weigh bridge and our little car

 

So, I return to the office , chitty in hand and Misty the border Collie takes the paperwork out of my hand and gives it to her owner the administrator. She then takes my credit card and returns everything  to me ,only slightly damp.

It made a long trip almost worth while.

 

You know in the last post I said the Salmon should be running about now? Well they aren't, or at least we cant see them yet. The Ribble is either very high or too low.  I now have a spy who is going to call me if there are any signs. John Reid one of my Fellow operatic singers lives just next to the weir. He was a time served woodworker who was apprenticed to the Mill and used to work on lathes powered by the mill wheel, right up until it closed in 1965.

The high flow does not deter some hardy folk from trying their luck

just up-stream of the weir.

 

The rehearsals for Calam are stepping up now, two evenings and Sunday afternoon for the next five weeks until Showtime. My beard is quite full now and doesn't itch quite so much. Wardrobe mistress wants to put me in an old army coat with pots and pans hanging from my belt, I said ok, as long as I can wear a coonskin cap......

 

Judith will be waiting in the wings on the last night with beard removal equipment.

ingleton waterfalls

I know, I know, its been nearly a month since the last blog update, I'm sorry but we have had the odd thing going wrong down south. Judith's Dad is recovering well from major heart surgery, is at home and well on the mend. He has a fall and breaks his hip/femur and pelvis. Poor chap. So he gets rushed in to hospital and moved to the specialist trauma unit in Oxford to have it fixed. Meanwhile his wife, Judith's mum has to go in to have her hip re-done in a London hospital, so poor Judith is frantically trying to visit them both in different towns. I decide to go down and give her a hand/moral support for five days, visiting them both several times. So this has sort of put us back quite a bit on the decorating front. We have thus decided to employ another local decorator James Cockell to finish the last 2 bedrooms , if our money will stretch that far. You have to be quite stoic about all of this, and remember that we all get older and frailer sooner or later, and what goes around......

Still, we have had some carpets fitted, at least the coconut matting by the back door. The Mounsey family, carpet division came to do this and will be laying the carpet throughout the rest of the house once all the decorating is done.

Coconut matting. Behind you can see the old Victorian tiles in the hallway, Judith spent ages with some special cleaner/sealant and they now look absolutely fabulous.

The weather has started to turn really autumnal and the tomatoes are all there but are refusing to turn red, just as Joan our neighbour predicted. This is about the only red one we got, which would have cost about £8! so we decided to go all harvest festival on them and make some green tomato chutney

instead. We have taken some round to Joan so she can have a proper gloat. 

we took a day off and went over to Ingleton and did the waterfall trail. Its about 4 miles and there's loads of spectacular falls (forces locally). There are some nice touched here and there , this one is by a fallen tree where there are lots of bits of slate that you can scratch your name in and hide amongst the piles of other peopled messages. Can you make out this one?

This is us by the big force. We got another chap to take it. He had previously been to Ayers rock and the bloke who took some of him and his family managed to miss out the rock completely, could have been Oldham he said.

Here are some shots of the falls and views looking back down the valley.

 

I particularly like this shot, I have been practicing with shutter speeds and f stops and it may be paying off.

 

 

Some of the felled trees have coins inserted into the annular rings, some sort of arboreal wishing well.

 

We have finished the old 'yellow room' and moved on to the remaining two bedrooms, its all looking rather nice, Judith's eye for colour is so much better than mine, thank goodness.

 

This is master James Cockell, nice chap, quite fastidious.

 

Couldn't resist putting this in. Its the champagne bar in the station on our way back to Settle after looking after the parents. We thought we deserved a small treat. Its one of my favourite places in London and featured quite heavily in mine and Judith's courtship.

Here is the chutney in production and

In jars with label.

 

Last Sunday we went over to see Sally my sister at a 30's themed event in Morecambe. It was a lovely day and lots of people has dressed up to join in the spirit of things. We walked along the stone Jetty and as the tide was out took some pictures of the mud flats. There were two people on horseback galloping to the sea, but so far away the look like flies in my shots, so here's one of the sea looking south towards Heysham.

 

Sally (right) and her mate Debs, getting their grunge on.

 

Other news, I am growing a beard as I'm now a 'grizzled old prospector' in Calamity Jane, and have a couple of lines. Show is on 28th Oct to 2nd November, so get your tickets soon, there going like hot cakes and sasperilly. Judith quite rightly hates the face fungus and I will have a ritual shaving off after the last night.

 

 

The rain this weekend will have swollen the Ribble and I'm hopeful of seeing some salmon leaping this week. They need the extra water to enable them to get over the obstacles.

 

Well, that's it for a bit, lots more has happened besides , but im afraid its all a bit of a blur tonight.

See you in a week or so.

M&J

 

Sorry We've been away.

Well, its been a while, we have been busy decorating and now all the bathrooms are finished, apart from the fun bits concerning window seats, roman blinds and towels, pictures etc.
Paul Adshead has been here for a week decorating  (many thanks to Judiths parents for the wherewithal, take a bow Jean and Harry Werrell)) doing a sterling job on the hall and stairs/landing which now looks great, even though we still don't have the carpets down yet.
 The cat has been really put out as the stairway was her personal romper room and sun palace, and the cold hard reality of uncarpeted wood was really a change too far so she put up a dirty protest and peed on the bottom step! Out with the feliway spray and chuck her in the Catnip bush and now she's a happy as Larry.

We had some friends Kate and Martin round for dinner recently and I set Judith the task of cooking a whole Rainbow Trout . Apparently you cut off the head and tail, cook the rest , then join torso back to head and tail using the magick of culinary artifice (prawn sauce) . Only don't go out of the room leaving the head and tail to the mercy of a hungry cat though! Nobody noticed ...

 

 

 

We have been very grateful to the previous owners , the Adamses, for leaving the potato plants behind, there has been a bit of a glut. Now, neither of us are gardeners exactly, but we had to laugh as Judith did not understand that the potatoes fell off the root as you pulled them up from the ground. The first one she dug up did have some still clinging, so she naturally expected all the others to behave in the same manner. Naughty potatoes! She pulled one up and the root was bare, so, looking dejectedly at the ground she said 'this ones a dud too' We eventually found the missing spuds a few inches below the soil surface. Very satisfying eating your own veg. Tasty too.

This is Paul Adshead, the chap I met down the social who is a semi-retired painter and decorator. He did the whole job in 4 and a half days, even repairing the old doors.

 

John came back from his holiday bringing his son Lucas as a helper to do the last minute snagging. Nice lad, brilliant at languages and the apple of his dads eye.

I had to take up the carpets and these things, gripperrods I think they are called. Rods of the devil more like. they have very sharp spikes that help stretch the carpet and keep it down on the floor. Don't sit on one though. My arse looked like a pin cushion.

I have had some fun and games putting up the ceiling roses and 3 small chandeliers in the hall/stairs/landing. Thank god for no more nails. I tell you, the house will fall down before these roses come unstuck. This is the one in the newly decorated landing looking out to Joan's garden via the lovely window. We had Paul take down the curtain pole and paint the window frame. Its all looking very clean and now without the curtains and the yellow below the dado rail, I like to think we are restoring some of the original feel to the place. And that Waring and Gillow bannister looks splendid.

Its not all work though. We went for a walk to Langcliff and the weir there behind the mill. I wanted to check this out before the salmon start leaping some time in September.

 

This is the salmon ladder , but I have seen YouTube video of them leaping right over the big drop too. There's lots of water at the moment, I hope they can get up when the river is in spate.

Know that saying 'calm as a millpond'? Well this is where it comes from. Its about 2 meters above the level of the river Ribble . About 30m wide and half a kilometre long. Stuffed full of fish and a haven for wildlife in general. Must find out who has the fishing rights.

 

Another view of Langcliffe weir with the old quarry in the distance, the setting sun making it look rather nicer than it actually is.

So, this is the last bathroom just about completed. Judith is this very second touching up the paintwork where my hand has strayed off course with a brush. Its all looking lovely. I'm glad we recycled a lot of the architrave and skirting boards, gives the rooms a bit of history .

This is the hallway from the front door , showing off the new paintwork and my jauntily angled light fixture,

 

Ed came back for a while to sort out our small drain problem. When you let the kitchen sink drain, the drain by the garage door made this unpleasant glug glug noise and the basement was getting really damp. No access to the drain run meant he had to take up some flags (again) and break into the drain run and rod it out from there. I wont show you what came out, too disgusting, suffice to say I wont be pouring any more fats down the sink. £200 fatberg anyone?

 

Well, that's it for now. Judith's dad is well on the mend, Laurence got into Uni in Southampton, and our friends Dan and Robert are coming tomorrow for a day , so we are having a short break Monday from decorating.

See you in a bit.

Rams head poker

A few months ago I was watching Ade Edmundson on 'The Dales'. Required viewing for me as a newcomer to the Yorkshire Dales. He visited a Blacksmiths and throughout the episode the editor cut back to the creation of a lovely fire poker with a rams head handle. I commented at the time to Judith that 'its lovely, what craftsmanship, isn't it good that such skills still exist' or something along those lines. Now Judith is a canny lass and filed this away up top. For my birthday this year I got a small carrier bag with a picture of said poker and a promise to have a similar one made by our very own Blacksmith at his smithy here in Settle.

This is a local sheep (ok its a ewe, not a ram, but they have similar horns) You can see the way the horns curl out and away from the head, making a circle round the ears, Its a breed called Dalesbred. Our neighbour Joan who wont mind me telling you is in her 80's, prefers these sheep to all others as apparently you can wrestle these beggars by their headgear, whereas a Texel sheep has no horns and so is a lot harder to handle.

So, yesterday morning we arrived at the forge and David Clements was waiting for us . He's a lovely bloke and very very accommodating with his explanations from everything from how the forge works through the history of blacksmithing to what was going on with the poker he was creating for me . No question too stupid it seemed.

This is the forge, the heart of the smithy, Its at a slight angle to the room walls. In times gone by this was to accommodate a set of bellows, hand operated to blow air into the coke fire, increasing the temperature and allowing the metal to be worked .Today, in a nod towards mechanisation, there is an electric blower doing this job, which can be adjusted to allow the fire to become hotter or cooler, depending on need.

 

The forge room itself is a thing of beauty, its festooned with a million bits and pieces hanging from the rafters. There are many metalworking machines: presses, drills, welders and one beast of a piece, an automatic hammer.

This is David firing up the Forge for us. He usually wears a leather apron. You don't wear wellies in the smithy, in case hot bits of metal find their way down there. Imagine. He tells a very funny story told to him by the previous blacksmith about an unwelcome visitor who got some red hot metal down his open necked shirt. It travelled all the way down his clothing until it fell out his trouser bottoms. He didn't come back.

 

So this is the beginning. Its a 1/4 inch rod of iron produced in Orgreave (remember the miners strike, yes that Orgreave) I wanted a poker about 2ft long, so he cut it to about 18 inches. the pointy end is drawn out by about 6 inches.

 

The handle end was heated up to red hot and split down the middle for about 4 inches using a hammer and cold chisel. This would become the horns later.

 

Below the split the rod was flattened and bent and folded in over itself to form the head proper. This was done at a much higher temperature to weld the iron to itself. This is the best way to join metal to metal. If you were to then saw this in half , you would not see a join. Problem with this is, the horn spikes were in danger of getting too hot and burning off, so they had to be cooled at regular intervals.

 

So, once the head and horns had been formed, the detail could be added. the horns were drawn out and twisted and the facial features added.

The shaft was beaten using the beast of the automatic hammer and the pointy end drawn out and beaten into a spike.

 

The whole thing took about 2 hours, David even made us tea.

 

 

 

Here's an awful picture of me holding my birthday present. I'm almost wishing for some cold weather so I can use this in anger. We had my initials and the year stamped on the shaft for good measure.

 

Its funny, we have walked past the smithy many times and wondered if it was still working. Question answered. David has many commissions and is a true artist in metal. We learned that he is responsible for the iron gates to the friends meeting house here in Settle which look like they may have been wrought in the forges of middle earth. Judith tracked David down from there, he has no website. He's also done some work for a friend of his in St Lucia (nice gig!) where he cast some iguanas in bronze to decorate the stairway he also created.

 

Settle never fails to amaze me. local arts and crafts are thriving. We have a cobbler who will make me a pair of walking boots for about £100, guaranteed not to leak. Then there are the farming brothers who produce 'Blue pig bacon' .

I just hope our venture into the hostelry business stack up against these artists in metal, leather and Pig!