You've been reframed!

Which part of my brain thinks it's a good idea to change the frame on a picture on a whim half an hour before you have friends arriving for brunch....mine apparently. I can confirm that it is definitely not a good idea, because you find out that the mount has faded and this fact shows up nicely within its new setting. Ho hum.

After a couple of days of pondering, I came up with what seems to have been a quick and cheap fix. Having lopped off the nasty mark and reduced the size of the mount I set to with ruler and pencil in hand to draw out a very simple Viking design I'd seen on line [artistic is not my middle name] which I then drew over in two shades of gold pen. It doesn't bear too close an inspection, but it's worked out fine and is now hanging in my front room [note to self...must reposition it so it's equidistant from the top and bottom!]. The frame came from a box marked free outside a former art shop in the town and the image is of the lovely St Nectan's Glen in Cornwall.

Arilx

Shhhh!

I won't be mentioning the 'C' word this month, but I have made the mincemeat. Heavenly smells and great joy in hurling it all in and then sloshing a bit of brandy and rum in. Stir it all round and bung it in a lidded box in the fridge to marinade for a few weeks. My kind of "cooking"😋

Arilx

At 11.03 precisely....

Lord Fairhaven was a chap who liked things to be precise. If the butler brought dinner in at 8pm sharp, it was impossible to his mind to say that dinner would be served at 8pm too as the process would take 3 minutes. For this reason dinner at Anglesey Abbey was always served at 8.03. He was a gentleman who saw that his shoelaces were ironed and that the maid went behind him sweeping away the shape of the footprints he left on the carpet pile. Beyond his quirks [perhaps we would call this attention to detail "obsessive" in today's parlance] he was a man who dreamt big and delivered. The skylight garden was one of his ideas.

The grounds of the property are ones which span all the seasons....no mean feat to achieve I would imagine. As we were there at the crossover many of the gem coloured dahlias were still flowering their little socks off, yet the promise of the forthcoming months could already been seen in the subtle autumnal hues and the architectural skeletons of the plants in the borders. The trees are Himalayan Birches. Even on a gloomy day their beautiful trunks were reflecting the light. It's one of those National Trust places which seems to be able to cater to many tastes successfully.

Arilx

Dot's Cookies

I was forced [yes forced😁] to make a batch of this new-to me recipe and then I was forced to taste them in the name of quality control. I rarely make biscuits, but these were for this month's Repair Cafe with maybe a couple held back for us here at GBT. Mr GBT is rather partial to a biscuit, particularly if it's homemade.

Lightly grease two baking trays and preheat oven to 190C. Chop 3oz plain chocolate [I did mine in the mixer first and then tipped it out]. Blitz together 3 oz caster sugar, 3oz soft brown sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extra, pinch salt, 6oz SR flour, 3oz soft marg [I used a blended butter] with one medium egg. Add the chocolate in just before the end of the whizzing. Put heaped teaspoonfuls of the mix on the trays and bake for 8-10 mins [mine were bigger so took 10]. Leave to cool on a wire tray.

If you are curious as to the Dot reference...she was a lovely lady I used to housesparkle for who sadly died earlier this year. We often used to enjoy one of these or her cheese drops [recipe here https://gnatbottomedtowers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/dots-cheese-drops.html?q=cheese ] with a cup of coffee for our elevenses on a Wednesday.

Arilx

Not empty handed.

This is Henry VIII in all his glory outside Trinity College, Cambridge holding a very fine chair leg in his hand. Rumour had it that it was placed there by some wag, but now it is thought that it was the handiwork of a now retired window cleaner, Peter Binge, who put it there as a joke and where, to this day, it has remained

Hope you have a lovely weekend. Fingers crossed that mine includes a spot of mincemeat making at some point!

Arilx

The good, the bad and the ugly.

After the exquisite ceiling yesterday....you knew it could only go one way didn't you and that was never going to be up!

The Lady chapel in Ely is the biggest in the country....it also has some of the more "out there" roof bosses I have seen in my time [and I have seen a few believe me]. One wonders with some of these whether their creators had been on the henbane beer....

It all starts off rather well.....most jolly and wholesome....

But, then it begins to nosedive with this array of maverick characters.....

Before we get to the ugly....hand on heart, I have never seen the like before. Actually I find it quite disturbing and it feels like a dire warning against man's proclivity towards deviant behaviour. However, it's much smaller than the others and so high up that its detail couldn't be seen with the naked eye. As someone commented on the Strange Things Found In Churches group over on Facebook it may, of course, be nothing more than a Medieval depiction of the measles! If you have any other theories please do share!

Well what more can I say?👀

Arilx

The advantage of being forgetful.

Since coming out of the other side of the good old childbearing years my memory has definitely taken a hit. For someone who is well organised I found it very disorientating initially, but over time I've adapted. Thank goodness for lists and the notes screen on my phone is all I can say. However, it's not all bad......

Only a matter of months ago I watched a programme on i-player about cathedrals. It featured Ely and at the time I mentioned to Mr GBT that I definitely wanted to see it for myself. With that I remembered to schedule the visit into our itinerary, but the detail of why promptly fell out of my head.

You might imagine that if you approach a cathedral with an interesting and highly unusual octagonal feature on its roof it might stir something within my noggin....well you'd be wrong. Not even the smallest inkling....perhaps you can understand why I was so excited when I did go in and it all came flooding back to me...surely the jewel in the crown.

Tomorrow I will return with the tale of the very different style of ceiling we found whilst there.

Arilx