When Doves Cry

OK this is now getting ridiculous. Now Prince is dead. What the ....??? This is clearly NOT a good year to be a celebrity.

Prince was a unique and towering talent, he worked with an amazingly wide range of artists (remember U got the look with Sheena Easton?) and his music was always ahead of the curve. And bloody good to dance to!

Raspberry Beret, Kiss, & Sign O the Times, 1999 .. all classics.

Prince Rogers Nelson, thank you for the music
. And may you rest in peace.

RIP Victoria Wood

2016 has not started well in celeb land - it has been a shocking year for losing talented & much loved people - David Bowie, Alan Rickman, George Martin, Paul Daniels, Ronnie Corbett  - what's going on?

And yesterday we learned about the tragically sad death - at only 62 - of the amazing, talented, fabulous, hilarious, brilliant Lancastrian, Victoria Wood.

She has made me both howl with laughter and cry with emotion. Victoria Wood on TV was brilliant - who can forget the perfectly parodied Acorn Antiques?  And the Ballad of Freda & Barry will live on forever as a truly classic comedy song. To this day I can't look at a copy of Woman's Weekly without smirking!

So goodbye Victoria - I can't believe you've gone.

May you rest in eternal peace, an eternity filled with joy & laughter.

Food glorious Food!

Before taking possession of our amazing new holiday / run away to eventually home, FSHubby and I naturally had to check out 3 VERY important things. One - peace; quiet (i.e. NO swimming pools within 5 miles, no footballing boys - in fact no near neighbours!) - 2/3 tick - we do have neighbours but they are miles away and have horses in their 'gardens'. Two - access to civilisation - tick we are approx. 1 hour from Liverpool, Manchester & Birmingham and even closer to Chester & Shrewsbury. Three - the most important - access to really good restaurants. And this got a HUGE tick.

Literally staggering distance from the new des res we have a decent gastropub and a lovely Indian restaurant. Plus there's a greasy spoon & a chip shop! Hurrah! The basics are covered. However the week we got the keys we started our food quest in earnest. We were told by our neighbours that a short drive (5 mins?) would take us to Plas Yn Dinas a lovely, recently refurbished pub with wonderful food.

So we visited for lunch with 2 very hungry 20 somethings (as you do) and all went swimmingly. I had a veggie onion soup with a huge cheese crouton, others had smoked trout pate, then for mains I had the Mediterranean flatbread & the carnivores had burgers. I give it 8/10 an excellent lunch.



The next day we headed (this time a deux) just 15 mins in the other direction to Townhouse in Oswestry, a Michael Caines outpost which we had high hopes for. And we were NOT disappointed! The meal was exquisite. We started with a  stunning 'amuse bouche' of haricot bean & truffle oil soup. I had a mixed salmon starter (2nd to bottom left image!) followed by stunning ravioli with duck egg & feta and spring veg (right) and then the best pudding I have ever had in my life - EVER - Red apple and salt caramel cremeux, confit apple with a doughnut - had to be eaten to be believed. FSHubby had a chicken & ham hock starter, then rock bass with a lobster & squid Bolognese and a whisky ice cream & crème brulee! Fab - u - lous. 10/10.

Then we stumbled upon The Sticky Walnut. Another wow! It was in a place called Hoole just outside Chester, so about 45 mins away. Yes a long way to go for a meal but honestly it was truly worth it. We had been searching for discount furniture warehouses and ended up on the outskirts of Chester (where we scored a bargain big dining table and a pair of beds that clip together to make a super king or split to become 2 singles - you know the type). Anyway we needed lunch after our retail therapy and were recommended the Sticky Walnut. And we were hugely impressed! Funky interior, lovely staff & fab food - I had blue cheese arancini with poached pears, spinach & walnuts - amazing (above right - I am rubbish at setting the images in this blog!!) FSHubby had braised Jacobs ladder (to the left, beef apparently) which he said was melt in the mouth.

So with all that amazing food on our doorstep the next thing is to find is a gym! Or a walking book so we don't turn into human versions of Jabba The Hut (well when my b*ggered Achilles mends that is!)

Birthday fun!

I have just celebrated another birthday, all good fun and they seem to come around faster & faster ..! I thought as last years was so low key I'd try & get out & about & DO something for this one.

And I sort of succeeded..

The lovely FSTeens took me out for lunch on the actual day - to the café at our local garden centre, The Olive Tree. They have recently improved and expanded and now offer wood fired pizzas and waitress service so I was looking forward to it. Luckily we had booked as it was a Friday & rammed and we were pleased to be given a lovely table by the window. But sadly that was the best bit!  Waitress service only works if the waitress / waiter pays attention and puts the correct order in! We ordered 3 pizzas as there were 3 of us. And one pizza, we even pointed to directly on the menu and spelled it out. So imagine our surprise when only 2 pizzas turned up! And the one missing was the one we spelled out ...! We waited about 5 minutes trying to catch someone's eye then I went up to the till to be told "it wasn't on the order". No apology just a pointing out of the "facts". Eventually the pizza arrived (to be fair the boy who brought it did apologise) and then we (foolishly) ordered puds & coffee.

The puds arrived - 3 of them this time - but no sign of any coffee despite the fact I saw the waitress write it down on her order pad. FS-Stepdaughter decided enough already & she went to ask for the manager. Now FS-Stepdaughter is 20, blonde and gorgeous and the way she was treated by the manager was APPALLING! He was beyond patronising - she explained the situation and he offered her a pathetic £3 discount on a £50+ bill then - the best bit - gave her 3 small wrapped biscuits - the type you would get with a coffee!! She was flabbergasted as was I. We will NOT be going back there again in a hurry!!

The next day we all headed out to The Brooklands Hotel near Mercedes Benz world in Weybridge  for "posh" afternoon tea. And learned a salutary lesson in going online for discount vouchers / deals. We were the ONLY people in the whole restaurant paying the full whack (£25pp) for our tower of cakes & sandwiches! Virtually everyone around us had some sort of voucher which got them exactly what we were having PLUS  a glass of prosecco for only £9.50pp! That will teach us. The internet is a wonderful thing. That said the tea itself was delicious and beautifully presented and came with an AMAZING ginger milkshake that was YUM. And I had Happy Birthday written in chocolate on my plate! Plus it was FS-Stepdaughters first experience of an afternoon tea so all was good in the end,

Back on line - Part 2

So. Off we went to view the compromised Mill, thinking we'd just pop in & carry on with the 4 other viewings we had that day. But no. Even though we knew about the river & the flooding we were simply overwhelmed by the house. This was Grand Designs, the kind of house you dream about. It was huge. Beautifully finished! But the river... the floods?? On further investigation & chatting we discovered the house was built specifically to withstand flooding. The "ground floor" was in fact the first floor ... and there was a walkway built specifically to ensure access when the floods were at their worst. And then we realised The Mill was easy walking distance to the village, a village that offered pretty much all you need to live a comfortable life .. and was only 15 mins drive to a lovely market town ..  hmm ...

Our heads full, we went off to view the 4 other houses. The next was VERY rural, hard to get to yet completely surrounded by other properties. That's a no then. The one after that was old & creaky and too much of a project. The next had an annexe but was upside down & very close to the main road. Nope. And the final one felt - well TINY - in comparison to The Mill. So off home we went, thinking hard.



Once home we couldn't shake The Mill. So we went back 2 weeks later dragging the FSTeens with us - we needed another opinion - were we mad? As it was right before Christmas we were greeted by an 18 foot Christmas tree in the entrance hall - and a VERY swollen river. So we donned boots and coats and went outside. It wasn't nearly as bad as we imagined (but to be fair it then got horrible and the owner took photos to show us). Again off we went home pondering. And then watched the news and saw villages all over Cumbria & Lancashire swallowed up by floodwaters; we saw houses we'd looked at with water sloshing around their now ruined kitchens, villages we'd considered with water coursing down the main street and we looked at each other and thought - hang on. And so we made a VERY big decision. With some to-ing & fro-ing it all fell into place.

Reader, we bought The Mill!