Three weeks of summer

Toadlet and I headed south and stayed overnight with the Derbyshire branch of the family. We had time to do a bit of exploring of an old quarry where trees now grow.

Next day I took Toadlet to my sister's house in Norfolk so that she could go to a family reunion in upstate New York << with this lot. I returned to DerbyshireDaughter's house. Three days of driving left me tired so we mooched about making jam and other relaxng things for a couple of days.

using up any old bits of sugar

'Moo' made the labels

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then we (DD and partner, 'Moo' and 'Piglet', plus me) went on a family day visit to Wentworth Castle near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. Here is 'Piglet' in front of a well-stacked wood pile.

Piglet and wood

It was turning into a hot day and his sunhat had been forgotten so I fashioned a hat for him out of my Seasalt snood – very piratical as well as practical.

Seasalt cap

Because we had also forgotten to bring sun screen, DerbyshireDaughter begged a splodge of it from another young mother for use on the fairheads and redheads of the family. Nothing like being a mum for making you bold in protecting your loved ones.

'Moo' in the children's play area

The gardens and the views from them were lovely.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After this I went to the house where I grew up (from the day before my twelfth birthday) in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire. My mother and my youngest brother still live there, he as her carer as she has Degenerative Macular Disease and is registered blind, though she can see large things very blurred: enough to get around without walking into things, but details and small things elude her. Tom also went to the family reunion so I was taking his place for a couple of weeks.

As well as making mum's meals and doing stuff like shopping, I tidied out a few cluttered old drawers. My mum grew up during the WW2 so hoarding things that just might be useful is ingrained in her psyche (mine too, learned from her, but to a slightly lesser extent). Also, she can no longer see well enough to know clutter and tat from useful stuff.

 And so, among other things, I threw out a dozen or so plastic medicine spoons, the sort that come with every bottle of medicine. There was a fair bit of other cheap plastic cutlery too, some of it broken. I do hope Wyre Council recycle stuff like this.

It was quite fun sorting through the oldest drawers, those from my parents' first (and only) kitchen cupboard in their house in Horsforth, the part of Yorkshire where I and three of my siblings were born. Mum still has this small but practical kitchen cupboard in her pantry.

Mum's house is like a museum. The two miners' lamps are kept on a high shelf above the picture rail in the hall. They are there in memory of the paternal side of my family who were coal miners in South Yorkshire. My grandad was good with his hands and mended his own shoes. His cobbler's anvil is in mum's boiler room.

cobbler's anvil

Some of his other tools hang in the tool shed that used also to be the coal shed, and some are to be found in the garage.

old tools and bits & pieces

Another old thing, this one in the pantry on a high shelf, is an old tin of liquorice. It contains prepared liquorice roots as well as lumps of black stuff that I presume is part processed on its way to becoming liquorice Pontefract Cakes. For my dad, growing up as a young child in Featherstone, Pontefract was the great metropolis until his family moved to Leeds.

Wiki image

Which brings me in a roundabout way to mum's washing-machine. There was a faint but persistent smell in mum's kitchen. DerbyshireDaughter and I finally traced it to the washing-machine. We dosed it with vinegar and hot water a couple of times (I'm leaving instructions about this with Tom!) and then DD decided to clean the filter. Let's just say we were... amazed... and had no idea what could have caused the filter to get so black!

Later I checked the filter again and found a black round thing that reminded me of a Pontefract Cake. I think it must have been there for a while and it wasn't dissolving so I presume it wasn't a Pontefract Cake. The mystery remains.

There is an old apple tree in mum's garden, half of which is dead but the other half produces apples so the dead half is kept as a counterweight! The apples are very like Bramley cooking apples but sweeter so adding sugar to them in pies is not usually required. Windfalls are collected and left out for the milk deliverer's pigs.

windfall apples on the doorstep

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

During DerbyshireDaughter's two day stay at mum's house while I was there, we went beachwards up to Fleetwood. Far less crowded there than the middle part of the Fylde coast, i.e. Blackpool, and especially on a very breezy day. We stopped near Fleetwood boating lake for model boats and small kayaks and enjoyed a windy walk on the empty beach.

'Piglet' was dead chuffed with his new sunglasses.

We found the boundary stone of the Preston and Wyre Railway. Before the railway up through Cumbria and into the west of Scotland was built, Fleetwood was the end of the line. The old hotel on the front at Fleetwood is called the North Euston Hotel.

After that the best way to get to Scotland on the west side of Great Britain was by boat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As well as trying to do helpful things at mum's, I managed a bit of wreckage when I slipped and fell out of the shower bringing the shower curtain rail down with me. But this was nothing compared to what happened when those at the clan gathering in Pulteney, NY assembled for a final group photo on the jetty (or dock, as they called it) at Keuka Lake.

it was all going swimmingly and then...

...even more swimmingly, you might say!

Apparently the dock had been a bit wobbly all week. No-one was hurt and those left standing found it hilarious. This family get-together won't be forgotten in a hurry! :)