Eccentric Amblings and Ramblings From Gnat Bottomed Towers

I have just finished "A Dictionary of Sussex Folk Medicine" by Andrew Allen which has sat on my shelf for years. It was one of those books I picked up for 50p at a jumble sale and have previously dipped into from time to time. Reading it properly from cover to cover has been absolutely fascinating as it's lifted the lid on how our ancestors tried to cure ills and maladies when paying a Doctor was prohibitively expensive and beyond the purses of many. Often these "cures" seem like madness to our modern minds, but in some instances there was real science behind it even if people didn't understand why they worked. One of the entries which really struck me was learning that wounds used to be wrapped in cobwebs to stop the blood from flowing from a very early time. At one time soldiers actually carried boxes of webs as part of their battle kit for this exact reason, but over time the practice was seen as unhygienic and it fell out of favour. Now for the int

So there's another week done. I'm finding the time is flying by, but I have kept my normal day for doing specific housework in place [a hangover from when I used to work fulltime] so that I can keep track of the days and made a deliberate decision to not do so much in the way of gruntwork at the weekend. Firstly the rumours are true...I may have accidentally stepped into the garden when hanging out the washing and tricked myself into doing a bit of weeding here and there. I've been pretty selective about what I've removed...mainly masses of self seeded Valerian which is a devil to get out if it gets too big as it has such deep roots. We've already got lots. By poking around though in the border I was delighted to find that the Lily-of-the-Valley has taken this time...my parents have given us a clump over the last two years and the first lot disappeared without a trace. Thankfully we are being spoilt by wild violets spreading everywhere...I am happy to leave them

Is it not oft said that necessity is the Mother of all invention. TYM is missing the gym...I mean really missing the gym. Last week we put our heads together to see how we could set up a temporary home gym....the only snag was that we literally have no gym equipment. Did that stop us in our tracks though....nope we rose to the challenge with zero outlay!! Step 1. Rope your Dad in from the outset. You're the one with the vision and ideas...he's the one with the practical skills and engineering experience to know whether your proposition is going to be safe or not. Here are the two of them busily emptying the heavy sandfilled base of the punchbag that's sat unused on TYM's bedroom floor for the last few years [except when he's hung his clean clothes on it!] into two buckets stolen from our garage. Weigh both to ensure they're the same. Step 2.  Both rummage around in the garage and shed for suitable candidates to be transformed....ta-dah

I've been out with the camera snapping again anything that takes my fancy as we potter around. Here's this week's selection for your delectation. This handmade felted bunting appeared outside our local shop last week. The hearts below single out some of our key workers. Always love a good pun. I'd be tempted to put work this company's way just for the joy of having their van parked outside. Small detail on a Victorian gravestone I noticed as I went galloping past. How frightfully British....this very understated, yet humorous way of conveying a very serious message on our local cinema. This stone bench with its intriguing beast supports and the mulitfunctional handrail and bootscraper combo are along The Causeway which is the show street in the town. If I was going to have an umbrella stand in my life this would be my choice....an iconic red telephone box one!! With a couple more of these highly original windows.

I was interested to hear Jack Monroe's tip of adding black tea rather than red wine to her bolognaise to give it an extra kick, but without the alcohol and a mere fraction of the cost. This was a new one to me. In my time I've soaked dried fruit in it prior to making malt loaf and a few years ago I dyed the fabric for this bag to get the right shade I wanted. If this article is anything to go by with all its suggestions I think I have been underusing the multipurpose and overlooked commodity of cold tea!  https://www.teatulia.com/tea-101/tea-uses.htm Please do let me know if you use it for anything else....I'd love to know if I'm missing a trick!! Arilx

As a lover of primitive folkart, I normally reserve my enthusiasm for admiring the work of others. From time to time I've wondered about having a go, but haven't been brave enough. Taking the bull by the horns I've decided that it's high time I got over myself, booted the anxiety out of the way and just gave it a go. I think so long as I love what I'm creating and make sure it's from my heart and not just trying to copy others that's the way forward. Thus I wanted a black folkart cat and now I have a black folkart cat. For the first time ever I drew out the design, made the template and then stitched the whole thing. I thought it would be easy....it proved to be harder to make something look intentionally simple than I ever imagined. Who knew I could have such strong opinions about the shade of thread for the whiskers or the shape of the eyes. All done from fabric scraps with the stuffing from the old pillows I took apart last week. Humphrey is quite i

This is the charming St Bartholomew's in Nymet Rowland, Devon and we stayed in a holiday cottage just up the road from it back in 2017. For reasons unknown I didn't cover this in the blog at the time [I tend to only write about some bits before I'm ready to move onto pastures new] and we just popped in late one afternoon just out of nosiness really. Looking for photos of something else I happened across them yesterday and decided that on a whim to share them with a FB churches group. To be honest I didn't think they'd even get the moderator's approval as they're hardly in the league of some of the big guns featured. Imagine my astonishment when a fellow who is an expert in his field and has made a series all about cathedrals that has been repeated several times on BBC4 commented on how much it made him want to go out and about again....it just goes to show that I really know very little still!! Inside it has retained the original oak arcading which

I have recently discovered the paintings of John Anster Fitzgerald or "Fairy Fitzgerald" as he was known. His work is beautifully detailed without being too twee and just the right side of dark without the psychosis of Richard Dadd [who I equally admire]. As I am unable to share actual images here [copyright and all that jazz] have instead found this short film  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFSlcNFS0KA  for anyone who wants to see what I'm talking about. At a local level it seems that, whilst the small children are not at school, the little people have moved in to take their place if this plethora of tiny doors that has magically appeared is anything to go by!! Not tip top quality I regret...snatched between humans going past in the evening on the phone, but what a lovely little surprise on yesterday evening's walk! Arilx

These toy soldiers are an enormous 1/4 of an inch high and are one of the first things I ever got for my dollshouse. I say "got" deliberately because my BIL painted them for me. Hand made or decorated miniatures are the best miniatures of all in my book. Yesterday it was my BIL's 60th birthday. As you might imagine he's had to put any plans he had to celebrate on ice. Mr GBT's family don't make a big thing of birthdays usually but this is not usual at the moment and his sister pinged him a message asking if we could send a card. We didn't have a suitable one here so we cheekily took a photo of G's handiwork with the tag line...."Happy birthday G....keep soldiering on!" I wrote a more sensible and appropriate message inside for him. Arilx

Well amazingly here we are again with a whole month gone and another blog post full of our personal thrifty doings. We were due to be away in Chester this week for a short break, but funnily enough that's not happening now. Thankfully we have been able to postpone or delay everything we had booked already so we haven't lost out financially. Usually we take our car to the Skoda garage to have its service done, but they are only doing specific jobs at the moment. Mr GBT contacted our local Halfords to see how the land lay with them instead....result...it's going in next week and we'll be paying £100 less!! Beyond spending on food and utilities etc I haven't spent a bean. I'm usually pretty good at thinking my way round situations to source things cheaper or find other ways of achieving them, but at the moment we have accepted that we are paying more to use the milkman and the local shop for what we are buying, but we are not spending any more because we're

With a little more time to spare in the evenings I am currently enjoying the free "History of Royal Fashion" course I have enrolled onto with FutureLearn. It's full of fascinating little nuggets and I have particularly been struck by how the Royal portraits were constructed to convey all sorts of messages. Maybe the eyes painted into Elizabeth I's dress in her Rainbow portrait are not quite so subtle, but for those who are interested this fascinating article gives more detail  https://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/making-art-in-tudor-britain/case-studies/the-queens-likeness-portraits-of-elizabeth-i?fbclid=IwAR3dGQVst_bmna3cRogpVfIAHEN7xPyOdcveunmwoGxzi2cMkzCaGz1ojyw  Imagine my utter amazement as I read down only to discover portrait number 4 was found concealed beneath many years of smoke in a local cottage in 1890. I posted it on our local history group and the current cottage owner responded! She has yet to see the painting as it's currently on loan from