Not mentioning the T word at all

Gigervamp

Since we moved the chickens up to the top field, their scratching has unearthed some interesting bits. A few old bottles, a wrapper from a pack of sausages with the price printed on it-they cost a whole 9p! :eek:

But the biggest thing they uncovered is a bath. That's right, somebody buried a bathtub! We wondered why that bit of the field was always boggy. :rotfl:

redlady_1

Is there anyone here who is 50 plus one day??? Oh that be LITTLECAL!!! Many congratulations love. xxx

So today I was going to do lots of baking. Out came the scales - and the battery has gone. It was fine yesterday when I made some bread. How typical is that. I still feel rough so it has been an excuse to do very little.

3D's - thinking of you and yours and Kidcat

greent

Evening all

Firstly, congrats and belated birthday wishes to littlecal - what a fantastic cake - I'm jealous!

D&DD - sorry to hear about DS2 ((hugs))

Kidcat - take it easy, lass - pleurisy on top of pneumonia is really not good. DH's brother had tehm together and ended up in hospital (he was only about 28, too)

Dinner tonight is a mishmash of stuff. DD is having lo roast beef (from last Sunday!), DS1 & DS3 are having pasta & meatballs, DH & I are having a chicken & veg hotpot thing (also had it last night and I couldn't be bothered to come up with anything new for tonight!) and DS2 is having cheese rolls (unusual child) Pud is leftover steamed banana sponge with blackcurrant & raspberry jam and custard Clears a few things from the fridge and freezer

Must look at Tesco tonight and doubling up of CC vouchers for presents (lego and clothes) for the children... It's rapidly approaching, it feels like - and I'm not very organised as yet

Hardup_Hester

Nothing going to waste.
I cooked so much today, a meal for all the family, 6 adults & 5 children, jerk & cajun chicken with rice & salad, pizza & chips for the foster grandchildren who are veggie, enough chocolate brownies to fill 4 tins & a cake for work tomorrow. I didn't know until they arrived how many were coming, it could have been 4 more adults, but in the end & at the last minute my DD's MIL decided against. I had to cook enough just in case, but nothing has gone to waste. The LO rice has been frozen, ditto the chicken, hubby has a tin of brownies to take to work for his cleaning team, the salad has been made into packups for tomorrow & I have brownies & a chocolate cake topped with marshmallows for my work colleagues. I'm knackered & I am going to put my feet up with.......my new kindle, woohoo, a 60th birthday present from DS1.
Hester

katieowl_2

I do not have the yellow ball
I do not have a ball at all?
What I have is pouring rain...
Lashing on the roof again!

Good grief it's grim out there. OH has taken DS to the bus, and I'm going Xmas Shopping with one of my DD's. I was toying with going a 'bit further' than normal to Llanelli...where there may just be a massive TKMaxx ...but not sure I fancy driving in this! Hope it stops soon.

We had a nice dinner last night, very simple but really tasty. One of those £3.49 ham joints from Aldi, sliced up with some plain boiled potatoes, and a massive tray of roasted veg, parsnips, butternut squash, peppers, sweet potato and red onions with a bit of chilli (from the greenhouse). Nom Nom.

Kate

GreyQueen

CCP wrote: »

littlecal - your cake sounds great - I would have loved to have seen it.

GQ - how exciting for your father to find a Roman artefact. The most interesting thing I ever found was in the garden of my last flat, where my fork came up from digging out couch grass (dreadful, dreadful stuff ) with a Victorian glass bottle stuck on one of the tines, which was a surprise. :shocked: I think it was probably used to hold something like smelling salts - I've still got it as it was about the only good thing to come out of that flat.

Once again I've spent most of today writing an essay so I haven't got much OS-ness to report. I'm off to make a cheese, leek and potato pie in a bit, though, which will use up LO puff pastry and the vast overdose of mash I made a couple of weeks ago and which has been sitting in the freezer ever since.

I hope everyone else has had a more productive day than I have.

I'll second the sheer bl00dy unutterable awfulness which is couch grass. My lottie was let go for several years before I had it and had reverted to a rough tussocky meadow with small treelets growing in it. Urrghhh. On top of a load of buried trash and covered with carpets and carpet underlay (that waffle-rubber stuff) several layers deep in places. The soil and grass had ended up growing on top of the underlay and if I ever find the man or woman responsible, they shall die like a dog.......;)

The most interesting thing dug up thus far, apart from the never ending procession of early Neolithic flint tools and clay pipe fragments, was something called a "rose-orb jetton" struck in Nuremberg in 15-something or other. They are about 1 cm across and have roses on one side and an "orb" (regal symbol thingy) on the other, plus writing. These were imported in quantity into the UK to be used as small change in one of our many historical small-change famines.

Jettons were literally counters which were used on grids to count out money before we used modern numbers; the Chancellor of the Exchequor is a hint at times past as an "exchequor" was the board you laid your jettons on.

I'm not particularly clever; just took it to the museum and had a fascinating chat with the coin guy. He showed me a weighty tome which had an entry about the jetton and it even had a picture of the very coin dye which "my" jetton had been struck from (there was a slight irregularity which identified it). I donated the jetton to the museum as it was a pretty nice example as the ones which have been dug up from farmland have usually been damaged by agri-chemicals. I have the paperwork for it somewhere inc the photocopy of the page from the coin reference book. It resurfaced in the past few days in a tidy-up and has vanished again in the disorder.:o

The very worst thing on my allotment is the horsetail, though. It has been unchanged since dinosaurs walked the earth, has roots 6 feet deep and the tops grow an inch per 24 hours in season. I've measured the blasted things myself. Some people have abandoned allotments on my side of the site due to the blasted stuff but I intend to keep showing it cold steel and I'll fight it to a standstill. It hasn't reached the lower half of my plot and my ambition is that it won't. Aiming low and achievable, as per usual.

HH have you had your 60th yet or have you had your Kindle ahead of the day?

Ooof, better get some brekkie and not forget I need to prep and load Gollum the Slowcooker as well as get dressed for work today.

Hope everyone has a good 'un.

ETA Gigervamp, I can believe a buried bath tub. I know people who have dug up prams in suburban back yards. The best yet was a pal who had a home an hour's drive from Auckland, New Zealand. The terrain there is lots of extinct volcanic bits so you drive around the bush and you're on steep slopes- the house to your left has its roof below road level, the house to the right perches halfway up a slope (and the next curve on the road reverses the directions - all in deep jungly tree cover -you get the picture.

Anyway, pal's place was a little wooden number on a steep forested slope, half on stilts to cope with the terrain. You squeezed the car on the side of the road and walked up 66 steps the house. The "garden" was mostly mature native trees but if you wanted/ needed to do some gardening, you needed to rope up and sort-of absail down it as it was about a 60 degree slope. The place was infested with hundreds of discarded bottles and, near the bottom of the slope but still well above road level was a buried CAR.

They couldn't get it out so they just had to rebury it!

Gigervamp

Goodness GQ! Mind you, my old neighbours back in London told me that when they moved into their house and dug up the garden, they found a whole motorbike buried there. You've got to wonder why go to all the hassle of digging a hole big enough to bury something that large!

Interesting info re the jettons. I'd never heard of them before.

VJsmum

This is reminding me of a house we visited in Phoenix, Arizona a few years ago called "Mystery Castle", built by a guy who thought he was dying of Tuberculosis so left his wife and daughter and went to Arizona and built this strange house which he left to the daughter. Sad cos they just didn't hear of him until after he died (at a fairly ripe old age in the end). The house was amazing - the guy had built "stuff" into the walls - the car he had travelled in was dismantled and assimilated into the building, artefacts he gathered were incorporated as well as memorabilia from the likes of John Wayne.

Don't know if i'm allowed to post the link, but Google is your friend. Mary - Lou (the daughter) was still alive when we went, and we met her - but i see she has now passed, sadly.

I am off christmas shopping today - just to make a start really as i have stuff to deliver down to Kent within a couple of weeks. My friend and i will include lunch in the trip so it's not all bad! The weather is so dank and grey it doesn't encourage one to do anything much. In fact there isn't really any weather - just greyness.

SO off to juggle some washing and get showered - can't go shopping in me jim jams! Have a goodun all.

short_bird

Another odd house, if you are ever in California, is the Winchester Mystery House. Extraordinary and beautiful place.


Also, the artist Kurt Schwitters had a house that turned into one big collage. If you left your socks on the floor for too long, they'd be plastered to the walls or staircase, or ceiling:D

GQ: when the manure arrives, is that it for the year? Can you just leave it on top or does in need to be forked in?
PS We haven't got the yellow ball.

PixieDust

no yellow ball here in the Black Country. I could really do with it, just for an hour or so, to dry out the ferret fleeces which are flapping damply on the line. So lob it this way, please; I promise to lobit back again when they're dry